Corporations As Criminals

Can a corporation commit a crime? If so, who in the organization is to be held responsible and how does a criminal justice system, designed to process individual criminals, cope with the criminal corporation? This book explores both the theoretical and practical problems of bringing criminal sanctions against corporate offenders through the courts and regulatory agencies. The underlying issues in public policy debates and academic literature on non-traditional crime are examined: the search for a definitive criminological label to apply to the offender and to describe the nature of the offence; the ambivalence of public sentiment; the practical immunity from criminal prosecution enjoyed by corporations; the social costs of the symbolic message that corporations are beyond the reach of criminal law; and the theoretical and practical feasibility of holding the corporate entity criminally responsible for its conduct. This book reflects the continuing effort by both those in academia and those in government to grapple with the ideological and practical problems presented by the addition of this relative newcomer, corporate crime, to the list of traditional and more familiar 'street' crimes. This book offers some of the latest legal, historical and sociological research on the subject of sanctioning corporate wrongs.Hochstedler, Ellen is the author of 'Corporations As Criminals' with ISBN 9780835784184 and ISBN 0835784185.