Crimbrary

Too Big to Jail: Letting White Collar Criminals Off the Hook
"Allowing major corporate wrongdoers to escape criminal penalties by using heavy fines or deferred prosecution agreements makes it harder to deter financial crime and creates 'disturbingly high' rates of repeated white-collar fraud, according to a forthcoming paper in the Yale Law Review.

It also reduces public confidence by creating 'a popular narrative that prosecutors permit (financial) managers to buy their way out of trouble.' wrote Nick Werle of Yale Law School.

The paper, entitle 'Prosecuting Corporate Crime When Firms Are Too Big to Jail,' suggests that the belief that some firms are so critical to the economic system that 'the government cannot credibly threaten them' with criminal sanctions has given those large corporations in turn little incentive to curtail crimes such as fraud, bribery, environmental safety offenses, antitrust violations, and money laundering....

the paper calls for prosecutors to alter their strategies and investigative tactics, to prosecute culpable individuals, reduce their reliance on corporate cooperation, and insist on structural reform of the companies."

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