Cover Story in The Economist

The cover story in this week's The Economist on the criminalization of corporate conduct.  Displayed here are some of the data on corporate prosecutions that I present in "Too Big to Jail" - my book forthcoming in October.  You can also see here for the first time estimates for corporate penalties in 2014 (the Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas cases, when finalized, will be record-breakers).

I appreciated this excerpt that The Economist quoted from my book:

“The big story of the 21st century is not corporate fines or corporate convictions, but prosecutors changing the ways that corporations are managed,” writes Mr Garrett in a forthcoming book, “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations”. “This represents an ambitious new approach to governance—in which federal prosecutors help to reshape the policies and culture of entire institutions—much as federal judges oversaw school desegregation and prison reform in the heyday of the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s and 1970s.”

The Rise in Corporate Fines

With another blockbuster corporate prosecution in the works, this past week Reuters ran a story on the rise in corporate fines over the past decade.  They cited to my data and prepared a chart depicting some of it (above).  But is this steady rise in federal corporate fines powerful evidence of tougher corporate prosecutions?  In "Too Big to Jail" I present that data but then describe how it is not what it seems. The approximately 650% percent rise in corporate fines is striking.  Billion dollar fines, once unprecedented, are imposed more regularly, though not often. However, that sweeping rise in fines is mostly due to a handful of blockbuster cases each year. Even in those remarkable cases, much of the money consists in payments to victims or to regulators and not fines strictly speaking.  And the fines themselves are often far less than they could have been under the Sentencing Guidelines.  But for the full story that lies behind the numbers you will have to wait for the book, which comes out in October.

UVA Clinic FOIA's Corporate Prosecutions

The New York Times just ran a story in Dealbook describing work with the UVA First Amendment clinic and the law library to locate sealed corporate prosecution agreements - my "Too Big to Jail" book studies such cases.  There are over 30 agreements, mostly non-prosecution agreements, of the over 300 that Jon Ashley of the UVA Law Library and I have identified, that have been "sealed" by agreement with the prosecutors.  The clinic has filed a FOIA request seeking all of those agreements - after the DOJ ultimately decided to provide the single agreement requested last year in a test case.  We view these corporate prosecutions as important, of public interest, and believe that basic information about how such prosecutions are resolved should be made public.

Sheriff Harding with many, many copies of "Convicting the Innocent"

Sheriff J.E. "Chip" Harding, of Albemarle County, VA is proposing forming a Justice Commission in VA.  He has offered to send copies of the book to law enforcement interested in reading more about why improvements can help convict the guilty and clear the innocent.

More on the Toyota DPA from Reuters

In a story by Reuters, I talk about what kind of a message a major deferred prosecution agreement like this one can be designed to send.

The Biggest DPA Ever?

DOJ Announces a DPA with Toyota with a proposed $1.2 billion fine

FOIA suit over non-prosecution agreements settles

More on the UVA First Amendment clinic lawsuit from the Corporate Crime Reporter

False confessions in Virginia

Read more in the Virginia Lawyer's Weekly