[computronus]

It's interesting to think about "jailing" an entire company for its crimes. After all, in some legal (US) ways, a corporation is considered a person. If a company is found guilty of committing some crime, penalize it in an analogous way to a human. For example, if a person guilty of X ends up in jail for 30 days, a company guilty of X ends up ... here I'm not sure. Barred from doing business at all for 30 days? Forbidden from communicating with its customers? Cut off from, say, paying its employees? All things an imprisoned human would be unable to do themselves.

I can't tell if the idea makes much sense, but there's a symmetry there, specifically around the personhood of corporations.

[twblalock]

Think about who actually suffers if you punish a company in this way: the customers, and the employees, most of whom did nothing wrong. That is not justice.

Punishing people for something they did not do is wrong, period. And collective punishment is widely regarded as a violation of basic human rights -- it's even banned by the Geneva conventions!

Furthermore, the possibility of such a punishment would have a chilling effect on business to an extent that would seriously damage the economy.

For all these reasons, no responsible government would enforce that kind of punishment on a company, and even if they tried, it would be struck down in court.

Punishments for a lot of corporate rule breaking are viewed as a "slap on the wrist" because sometimes the rules that were broken just aren't that important. Similarly, we don't usually put people in prison for speeding.

[computronus]

Sticking with the analogy, there are still others who suffer while one person is punished with jail time or otherwise. If the single earner in a household is locked up, their family suffers in many ways. If they happen to run a business, their business and employees suffer too. And none of them did anything wrong.

The problem is with the scale of punishing an entire company, though. There's a lot of fallout from that, it's true. So the punishment would need to be fair, limiting the offending entity as a whole without unduly harming innocent employees. This could be where the analogy breaks down (which argues towards how unfair the personhood of corporations is, if there's no good recourse for wrongdoing).

As for a chilling effect ... yeah, that's the idea. Employees in a company would be very much more interested in staying on the right side of the law because of the heightened risk to, well, everybody.

I'm reminded of businesses that need to stay accredited, or licensed, or otherwise in legal compliance with something in order to function at all. If one errs enough (criminally, say), it loses that blessing, and could end up folding, and all the innocent employees are out of a job.

[mcv]

A company consists of people. If a company commits a crime, some of those people are responsible for it. That they're not financially liable does not mean they can't be held criminally liable. But of course it's got to be the people in charge, the people who made the decision to do it, allow it, enable it, create a culture that normalised it, who need to be held accountable and liable, not just the person who received the order to do it.

[birdyrooster]

Businesses have been run from the confines of prisons, so I think the analog is all of the employees at the corporation must live and work from jail for the next 30 days.

[jgeada]

Might be easier to just jail the employees with real decision making authority. Most companies I know that is a very small subset, most everyone else is just supposed to do what they're told.

[birdyrooster]

I am not sure "I was just following orders" is a great defense to keep you out of jail.

[jgeada]

I don't disagree, but have noticed that the American justice system seems to obsess on jailing/punishing the people following the orders and completely ignores or treats very gently the people making the decisions and giving those orders.

No rules for the rich and powerful, draconian rules for everyone else.