[dredmorbius]

The police don't have the power to imprison you either. They can arrest you and place you in jail. Prison requires courts.

Corporations can, and increasingly do, pursue actions against individuals which result in prison time being imposed, including for purely financial transgressions which bear an exceptionally strong resemblance to debtor's prison.

[pcrh]

To imprison versus to jail is a distinction in US English; apologies for my English...

Corporations per se do not have the ability to imprison people, they petition the government to do so. Corporations may sue people in the courts, but if the suit does not result in a criminal conviction (as opposed to a civil one), it does not result in imprisonment.

[dredmorbius]

Corporations do alter the law to make criminals of people. As happened, say, to Aaron Swartz, who faced at least 10 felony counts, $1 million in fines, and 50 years in prison.[1] The laws he was indicted under were supported by various online, software, and publishing interests. Pursuit of criminal charges against Swartz was initiated by JSTOR and MIT.

The same law made violating a Website's TOU/TOS a felony -- which in the case of 17 Magazine meant that visiting its website if you were in fact 17 was a Federal crime.[2]

The reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which would have closed the loopholes under which Aaron Swartz was blocked by Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation.[3]

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Notes:

1. http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/217117-united-states-...

2. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/until-today-if-you-wer...

3. http://o.canada.com/technology/swart z-doc-director-oracle-and-larry-ellison-killed-aarons-law