Download This PaperThe Current Corporate Sentencing Proposals: History and Critique
Federal Sentencing Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1990
6 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2020
Date Written: 1990
Abstract
On October 26, 1990, the United States Sentencing Commission released another proposed draft of corporate sentencing guidelines. A competing proposal by the Department of Justice was also released. Both are largely embellishments of 1989 Commission proposals' that produced an uproar in the business community and Congressional oversight hearings last Spring.
Both 1990 proposals suffer from the same basic deficiencies as their 1989 progenitors: the penalty levels were picked out of thin air, without regard to past sentencing practice and without regard to their potentially destructive impact on the economy. The entire approach is suffused with the basic policy error of divorcing the level of punishment from the rationale for criminal prohibitions.
How did the corporate sentencing proposals reach this low estate? In 1988 the Commission published a Discussion Draft that embodied an explicit social cost-benefit framework anchored by empirical findings. The backlash against that proposal led to the abortive 1989 proposals and, through them, to the current drafts. The 1990 drafts can best be understood as a reaction against the structure of the 1988 proposal and as a rejection of the empirical evidence developed in connection with that proposal.
Keywords: United States Sentencing Commission, sentencing commission
JEL Classification: K14, K22, K42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation