A study and analysis of lack of enforcement against criminal actions in corporate America and what can be done to fix it. In the early 2000s, federal enforcement efforts sent white collar criminals at Enron and WorldCom to prison. But since the 2008 financial collapse, this famously hasn’t happened. Corporations have been permitted to enter into deferred prosecution agreements and avoid criminal convictions, in part due to a mistaken assumption that leniency would encourage cooperation and because enforcement agencies don’t have the funding or staff to pursue lengthy prosecutions, says distinguished Columbia Law Professor John C. Coffee. “We are moving from a system of justice for organizational crime that mixed carrots and sticks to one that is all carrots and no sticks,” he says. He offers a series of bold proposals for ensuring that corporate malfeasance can once again be punished. For example, he describes incentives that could be offered to both corporate executives to turn in their corporations and to corporations to turn in their executives, allowing prosecutors to play them off against each other. Whistleblowers should be offered cash bounties to come forward because, Coffee writes, “it is easier and cheaper to buy information than seek to discover it in adversarial proceedings.” All federal enforcement agencies should be able to hire outside counsel on a contingency fee basis, which would cost the public nothing and provide access to discovery and litigation expertise the agencies don't have. Through these and other equally controversial ideas, Coffee intends to rebalance the scales of justice. “Professor Coffee’s compelling new approach to holding fraudsters to account is indispensable reading for any lawmaker serious about deterring corporate crime.” —Robert Jackson, professor of Law, New York University, and former commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission “A great book that more than any other recent volume deftly explains why effective prosecution of corporate senior executives largely collapsed in the post-2007–2009 stock market crash period and why this creates a crisis of underenforcement. No one is Professor Coffee’s equal in tying together causes for the crisis.” —Joel Seligman, author, historian, former law school dean, and president emeritus, University of Rochester

Corporate Crime, originally published in 1980, is the first and still the only comprehensive study of corporate law violations by our largest corporations. The book laid the groundwork for analyses of important aspects of corporate behavior. It defined corporate crime and found ways of locating corporate violations from various sources. It even drew up measures of the seriousness of crimes. Much of this book still applies today to the corporate world and its illegal behavior. A new introduction, "Corporate Crime: Yesterday and Today--A Comparison," prepared for this edition by coauthor Marshall B. Clinard, discusses the development of a criminological interest in corporate crime, explains the nature of corporate crime, and analyzes a number of issues involved in its study. Among the issues tackled are whether today's corporate crime is greater, more serious, and more complex; accounting fraud and its crucial role in hiding corporate crime; the pharmaceuticals, the industry with the most corporate violations; explanations of corporate crime in terms of economic factors, corporate culture, and the role of top executives; and new laws to control corporate crime and alternative approaches.

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.

First published in 1984, this book examines corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry. Based on extensive research, including interviews with 131 senior executives of pharmaceutical companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and Guatemala, the book is a major study of white-collar crime. Written in the 1980s, it covers topics such as international bribery and corruption, fraud in the testing of drugs and criminal negligence in the unsafe manufacturing of drugs. The author considers the implications of his findings for a range of strategies to control corporate crime, nationally and internationally.

Corporate Crime is a collection of original papers by many of the world's leading experts on corporate crime, and covers its causes, extent, and control.

This well-documented report on the corporate behavior that has an adverse impact on public health and environment provides an overview of the problems and offers solutions and reforms to make corporations more responsive to the public good.

In a thorough reappraisal of the white-collar and corporate crime scene, this Second Edition builds on the first edition to complete the criminal narrative in an outstanding reference resource.