NCJ Number
201233
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2003 Pages: 313-325
Editor(s)
Richard Sparks
Date Published
July 2003
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article examines and analyzes corporate criminality and the evidence of contemporary influence of religious thought on legal thought in the realm of punishment and deterrence evidenced in the basic connection between corporate crime and religious sensibility.
Abstract
Today, the prosecution of corporation (corporate crime) for offenses, such as homicide and statutory offenses is well-established in the United States. Corporate criminality tends to focus on calculated indifference to value in itself. These corporate entities are not categorized as organizations, but as persons. However, what is being said of a corporation is that it is nothing more than an organization. Therefore, corporate criminality poses a challenge to one’s sense of reality. Punishing a supra-individual entity raises the question about the reality of the supra-individual entity. It is argued that convicting corporations of true crimes diminishes the moral authority of the criminal law because it is being used without belief. This is where ontology comes into play, the sense of the nature of the beings around us. Corporations are just linguistic entities, networks of contracts, and organized activities of individuals. It is hoped that the fear of the label criminal will have a practical effect in the outcomes of design systems. The ontology of a responsible person here, irreducible to human individuals or to a system, may connect this area of criminal law to religious thought in a special way. A broad acceptance of religious sensibility may be possible by the extent of religious practice in the United States, and be evidence of contemporary influence of religious thought on legal thought. References