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- Title
Corporate and White-Collar Crime Enforcement: Should Regulation and Rehabilitation Spell an End to Corporate Criminal Liability?
- Authors
Meeks, Wilson
- Abstract
In the wake of corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom, the landscape changed for the enforcement of white-collar crime and crimes committed by corporations. Currently, the DOJ and SEC, armed with traditional enforcement tools and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, aggressively pursue steep criminal sanctions against individual defendants and use the threat of indictment to force corporations to adopt institutional reforms intended to rehabilitate them. This system, however, creates inefficiencies and inequities that are socially and economically undesirable. For example, because indictment can result in a corporation's destruction, the DOJ can force a corporation to agree to a Deferred Prosecution Agreement that has inequitably onerous terms. Innocent corporations might also be forced to settle with the DOJ rather than risk exposure to the criminal system. Additionally, parallel enforcement by the DOJ and SEC results in the inefficient regulation of corporate reform. This Note proposes that one solution to these problems is to place the enforcement of corporate misfeasance entirely in the civil system. This would obviate the harmful practice of corporate indictment, preserve the government's ability to aggressively enforce corporate misfeasance, and achieve more equitable and socially desirable results.
- Subjects
WHITE collar crimes; COMMERCIAL crimes; CORPORATE corruption laws; CRIMINAL liability; BUSINESS ethics; LAW enforcement; INTERNATIONAL sanctions; ENFORCEMENT; REHABILITATION
- Publication
Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems, 2006, Vol 40, Issue 1, p77
- ISSN
0010-1923
- Publication type
Article