In our modern society, corporations are becoming more important not in just economical, but also in social and political aspects. Largely, corporations contribute to society in legal ways. However, when they misuse their power and social status they a...
In our modern society, corporations are becoming more important not in just economical, but also in social and political aspects. Largely, corporations contribute to society in legal ways. However, when they misuse their power and social status they are highly likely to act against the public interest. Therefore our criminal system should evolve from old practices focusing only on natural persons, to a new system that can provide new theories and better ways that can effectively cover crimes of corporations, or imaginary persons.
Historically, debates in the United States and the United Kingdom on corporate crimes have been formed on the basis of practical needs to punish and regulate sharply increasing misbehaviors, public nuisances, and illegal practices of corporations, during the late 19thand early 20thcentury. In the continental legal system same debates started to develop after the Industrial Revolution and World War Ⅱ, largely inspired by the examples of US and UK. Germany took an alternative approach, imposing administrative fines, rather than criminal punishments on illegal practices.
The reason why definition of corporate crime is important is that only after a violated law is defined, a concrete and proper measure of punishment can be decided. If a deed of a company constitutes a corporate crime, the individual involved in the crime is just a doer of the deed, but the main constituent responsible for the crime is the company, and therefore it is arguable that the company can be a subject of the crime and responsible for the crime, which leads to a question of the company's capability of getting punishment.
In addition, penalties for corporations have to be effective once we set a firm rule for corporate crimes. It is surely necessary to lift the fine limits for corporates, and in the long run we should consider making it possible to determine the fine based on corporates’ total amount of assets.
Probation orders can give corporations a good chance to correct and improvement themselves, effectively preventing a second offence in the future. A probation order is a very proactive countermeasure against corporates crimes which puts more weight on correction than on punishments and inflicting damages to corporations. Remedial orders and community service orders can of course play a major role in preventing future crimes also.
Moreover as sanctions restricting the operation of the corporation, we can think such as disorganizing the corporation, suspension of operation. Disorganizing the corporation means stopping the operation of corporation permanently. It is the extreme penalty that can be imposed on corporations and it is compared with the life sentence imposed on human beings. In contrast of this sanction, the suspension of operation temporarily stops the operation or action of the corporation. Also, we could think to be taken is degrading the prestige and credit of the corporation.
There are methods for the sanction seeking victim's rights such as restitution, remedial order and notices to crime victims. And so we can consider such sanctions giving serious impact to influential corporations as a penal system.
In order to take effect on these sanctions, above all, it must be emphasized that there is a self-regulatory system to prevent these corporate crimes including unfair trade acts. A self-regulatory system will be the definitive solution to enhance corporate image in the long-term as well as to facilitate fair competition between companies in the short term.