[underlipton]

Laymen here: my guess would be that the financial and social resources corporate representatives have access to (both personally and through the entity that has a vested interest in them not going to jail) make the prospect of prosecuting them for criminal misconduct unappetizing. It would be a lot of time and money to send people with a lot of powerful friends to jail for a handful of years, at best. As a prosecutor, what's better for your career: that, or spending significantly fewer resources putting street-level criminals in prison for 5, 10, 20 years?

The issues at hand seem distinct but related.

[Gormo]

Before trying to explain why you think business executives aren't being prosecuted for criminal conduct, can you first point to a reliable source of data that indicates that this is actually happening, and isn't just a myth reinforced by online echo chambers?

Anecdotally, most of the large corporate scandals that involved actual criminal conduct that I'm aware of did result in prosecutions and, often, convictions of the culpable parties. For example, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff, and Elizabeth Holmes all went to jail.

[underlipton]

2008 happened.

You could also just look for examples of officials trying to explain why they won't bring charges against banking officials.

https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx...

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-havent-bankers-been-p...

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137789065/why-prosecutors-don...

I should state that this reply is mostly for other people reading our comment thread, as I can think of no adult American who would present your argument in good faith.