Abstract
A criminal injustice system cannot rediscover its promise for justice without
invigorating corporate criminal responsibility. However, maximizing corporate
punishment is not a path to justice because policymakers must make choices
about how much to invest in increased detection of corporate crime, warnings,
persuading voluntary commitment to repair harm to victims, deferred
prosecution agreements, in addition to increased prosecutions. Funding can shift
from carceral punishment of crimes of the powerless to support all these forms
of intervention. Ultimately, such transformation might be self-funded by
improved tax compliance and reduced corporate sabotage of economic futures
by the destruction of ecosystems. When all this is done as a coherent mix,
corporate criminal responsibility can contribute profoundly to a good society.
This Article develops the idea of minimally sufficient deterrence by building
on Brent Fisse’s accountability principle for corporate offenders—all who are
responsible should be held to account—whether they are individual executives,
sub-units of corporations, auditors, ratings agencies, corporations that are
criminal actors, or other implicated firms upstream or downstream.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 911-936 |
Journal | Journal of Corporation Law |
Volume | 47 |
Issue number | 4 |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |