Criminal Sanctions for Corporate Misbehavior - A Call for Capitalist Punishment

• NCJ Number: 91802
• Journal: Humanity and Society Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1982) Pages: 267-293
• Author(s): M D Schwartz; C Ellison
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 27 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Revised version of a paper presented at the 1980 annual meeting for Humanist Sociology, Louisville.

Annotation

This paper examines the difficulties of controlling illegal corporate behavior and suggests some ways to control it legally as a step toward greater public control of the illegal activities of corporate actors.

Abstract

While the American justice system and the public can conceptualize and deal with criminal acts by individuals, there is difficulty in taking the same approach to a group that generates criminal acts through its organizational network. The problem is further compounded when the principal purpose of the group is not to commit crimes but to fulfill a legitimate function in the capitalist economy. While civil law provides for a victim of corporate action to collect damages for injuries inflicted, criminal liability is incurred when the state, or the aggregate of all citizens, is deemed to have been threatened by the offender's behavior. Certainly corporate behavior that causes death, physical injuries, and financial loss that parallels the traditional crimes of homicide, manslaughter, and larceny, often with greater consequences than the harm that might be inflicted by an individual, should be treated as criminal. Caselaw provides for the criminal prosecution of corporations, and various legislatures have made changes in the criminal code to specify such criminal liability. There are distinct difficulties in criminally prosecuting corporations, however, because of the difficulty of establishing culpability and mens rea for a corporate entity and the costs involved in collecting the evidence required to identify those corporate personnel culpable in producing the criminal corporate behavior. Significant problems also exist in the sentencing of corporations. The sentence should be appropriate to the crime while not having a significantly injurious impact of innocent parties, such as employees and consumers. Some popular suggestions are fines based on percentage of the corporation's profits and receivership, which involves the use of strict monitoring of the corporation's activities to ensure that criminal activities are stopped. Forty-six references are provided.