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DiMento, Joseph F.C.; Geis, Gilbert --- "Corporate Criminal Liability in the United States" [2005] ELECD 203; in Tully, Stephen (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Legal Responsibility

Editor(s): Tully, Stephen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843768203

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Corporate Criminal Liability in the United States

Author(s): DiMento, Joseph F.C.; Geis, Gilbert

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

9 Corporate criminal liability in the
United States
Joseph F.C. DiMento and Gilbert Geis



Introduction
The front pages of American newspapers today, when they are not displaying
pictures of dead bodies lying about on mideast killing fields, are likely to show
a corporate executive in business suit ­ with handcuffs on his wrists behind his
back, being led into a criminal court by burly government agents. This devel-
opment differs dramatically from earlier days when news of a business leader
who had been charged with a criminal act (unless it was a sex scandal) was
likely to be buried in the paper's business section, if it was attended to at all
(Dershowitz, 1961).
The current actions by American law enforcement agencies against corpo-
rate wrongdoing ­ and the dramatisation of such efforts ­ is one of the more
significant developments in the arena of white-collar and corporate crime. The
desire to focus attention on what they are accomplishing is one of the prime
goals of American regulatory agencies. They live (and sometimes die) in terms
of public perceptions of the success of their activities, matters that become of
prime importance during congressional hearings on their budget request for
the forthcoming fiscal year. The development and the particular nature of
corporate criminal liability in the United States mirrors basic elements of the
ideology and political arrangements of the country, many of which are congru-
ent with those of the United Kingdom. The hiatus in England after the South
Sea Bubble Act ...