Want to cut down on business crime? Stop fining big companies as a punishment! A better way exists.
Corporate crime? I'm not sure if something like that exists. If we want the number of "white collar" crimes to go down, we need to stop punishing corporations with big fines. It's not as crazy of an idea as it sounds.
First of all, when I say there is no such thing as corporate crime, I just mean that crimes are always done by individuals. Keeping this in mind, you can guess what I think is the best way to stop this crime: catch the bad guys!
Who Pays When a Company Breaks the Law?
Who pays when a big company breaks the law and has to pay a fine? First, the people who own shares pay. Many of these people are innocent retirees who have money invested with the company and didn't know they were breaking the law. If the fines hurt the company's finances, then the employees have to pay by losing their jobs. Who is not paying? Just the people who chose to break the law, or criminals.
People, not businesses, are the ones who do wrong. When a company dumps poisons into the environment, a PERSON made the choice to do that (or several people). When a business steals from a pension fund or breaks a worker's rights, those are CHOICES that INDIVIDUALS made. Corporate crime is done by people, not by corporations.
If you want to stop corporate crime, you need to start putting the people who do it in prison. In our current system, company officers often do cost-benefit analyses to see if the money they make from certain crimes is more than the fines they have to pay. Even if they break the law, they probably won't be held personally responsible. Why not make them answer for it?
It is fair to fine companies for the real costs that a crime caused to others. We have to clean up toxic messes and pay people who have been hurt for their losses. This is also why shareholders should be careful about who they choose for the board of directors. But "punitive" fines are silly unless they are given to each person who broke the law. The person who did the wrong thing should pay the fine.
Is this really such a strange idea? Not in my opinion! By the way, which do you think is more likely to deter a corporate officer from committing a crime, a fine that is paid by the company, and doesn't even affect his salary, or ten years in jail? The answer to this question will tell us what corporate crime is.
