The Odds Are Very Much Against My Going To Jail

At most, the company will have to pay a fine.

That seems to have become the mantra for corporate crooks since our Justice Department adopted a policy of 'deferred prosecutions', by which they mean that the Justice Department will not indict a company or its officers for criminal or civil violations as long as the company investigates the suspected crime, issues a report on its findings and promises not to do it again. This is such a popular policy at Justice - and, of course, at the accused companies - that the SEC is also practicing it. It's gotten so bad that in some cases Justice tells the company that the department is considering an investigation. Would the company do the investigation itself, please? Some of the companies that have benefited from this policy: Moody's, JP Morgan, Beazer Homes, AIG, Prudential, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Computer Associates.

The Justice Department cites their limited resources as one reason for the policy. Question: what have been the department's budget requests for the past five years?

Here's an apt comment from Mary Ramirez, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and a former assistant United States attorney, “If you do not punish crimes, there’s really no reason they won’t happen again. I worry and so do a lot of economists that we have created no disincentives for committing fraud or white-collar crime, in particular in the financial space.”