The book instructs corporate counsel on how to adopt forward-looking compliance policies that can prevent criminal liability and how to mitigate the severity of penalties when they are unavoidable.

Who should police corporate misconduct and how should it be policed? In recent years, the Department of Justice has resolved investigations of dozens of Fortune 500 companies via deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, where, instead of facing criminal charges, these companies become regulated by outside agencies. Increasingly, the threat of prosecution and such prosecution agreements is being used to regulate corporate behavior. This practice has been sharply criticized on numerous fronts: agreements are too lenient, there is too little oversight of these agreements, and, perhaps most important, the criminal prosecutors doing the regulating aren’t subject to the same checks and balances that civil regulatory agencies are. Prosecutors in the Boardroom explores the questions raised by this practice by compiling the insights of the leading lights in the field, including criminal law professors who specialize in the field of corporate criminal liability and criminal law, a top economist at the SEC who studies corporate wrongdoing, and a leading expert on the use of monitors in criminal law. The essays in this volume move beyond criticisms of the practice to closely examine exactly how regulation by prosecutors works. Broadly, the contributors consider who should police corporate misconduct and how it should be policed, and in conclusion offer a policy blueprint of best practices for federal and state prosecution. Contributors: Cindy R. Alexander, Jennifer Arlen, Anthony S. Barkow, Rachel E. Barkow, Sara Sun Beale, Samuel W. Buell, Mark A. Cohen, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Richard A. Epstein, Brandon L. Garrett, Lisa Kern Griffin, and Vikramaditya Khanna

Drawing upon a wide range of sources of empirical evidence, historical analysis and theoretical argument, this book shows beyond any doubt that the private, profit-making, corporation is a habitual and routine offender. The book dissects the myth that the corporation can be a rational, responsible, 'citizen'. It shows how in its present form, the corporation is permitted, licensed and encouraged to systematically kill, maim and steal for profit. Corporations are constructed through law and politics in ways that impel them to cause harm to people and the environment. In other words, criminality is part of the DNA of the modern corporation. Therefore, the authors argue, the corporation cannot be easily reformed. The only feasible solution to this 'crime' problem is to abolish the legal and political privileges that enable the corporation to act with impunity.

With industrialization and globalization, corporations acquired the capacity to influence social life for good or for ill. Yet, corporations are not traditional objects of criminal law. Justified by notions of personal moral guilt, criminal norms have been judged inapplicable to fictional persons, who ‘think’ and ‘act’ through human beings. The expansion of new corporate criminal liability (CCL) laws since the mid-1990s challenges this assumption. Our volume surveys current practice on CCL in 15 civil and common law jurisdictions, exploring the legal conditions for liability, the principles and options for sanctioning, and the procedures for investigating, charging and trying corporate offenders. It considers whether municipal CCL laws are converging around the notion of ‘corporate culture’, and, in any case, the implications of CCL for those charged with keeping corporations, and other legal entities, out of trouble.

In Corporate Criminal Liability and Compliance Management Systems: A Case Study of Spain, Santiago Wortman Jofre offers a case study where he examines the way in which Spain understands and implements Compliance Management Systems. Corporate criminal liability has become a matter of controversy in civil law countries since it challenges the traditional principle of societas delinquere non potest, by which corporations cannot be held criminally responsible. However, corporations have taken a new position in the world’s political agenda, as evidenced by the 2017 G20’s High Level Principles on the Liability of Legal Persons for Corruption. The new trend in criminal law advocates for the criminal responsibility of legal persons and pushes for the implementation of Compliance Management Systems as deterrent for corporate criminality. Santiago Wortman Jofre then presents evidence on the role of criminal justice and the importance of positive stimuli requirements as effective incentives to drive companies to implement compliance programs.

Corporate crime in China has garnered worldwide attention and in the recent years we have witnessed positive legislative and administrative efforts by the Chinese government to prevent corporate misconducts. This book first defines the meaning of corporate crime in China and answers the basic questions of what corporate crime is through real life cases. Then, it introduces the history of corporate crime and reviews academic studies through these key questions. The book also discusses the scope of corporate crime, the basis of corporate criminal liability, the criminal liability of State organizations, the corporate compliance programs and corporate criminal liability and the procedural issues. The book also provides suggestions from a comparative perspective by referring to the latest global developments on corporate crime. In the concluding chapter, the book discusses the goals of corporate crime prevention policy and comes up with feasible reform proposals with a brief summary on the existing problems of the current policies through a macro perspective. There is no existing book that deals with the legislation and criminal justice practices of corporate crime in China and this book will help to shed insight into the subject.