Corporate Criminal Responsibility

Criminal prosecutions of corporations and other fictional entities have occurred routinely in the United Kingdom since the nineteenth century and in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. During the later portion of the twentieth century the Netherlands, Canada, and France enacted standards for holding fictional entities criminally liable. Elsewhere in the world, legislative bodies and courts are being urged to recognize corporate criminal liability by advocates who point to the major role played by organizations in modern day life and argue that active prosecution of organizations is essential to effective crime control efforts. Even so, because of theoretical and practical problems in prosecuting fictional entities, corporate criminal liability is controversial. The debate centers on the issues of how to measure a fictional entity's liability, how to sanction a fictional entity, and whether criminal prosecution of organizations is effective.