Conclusions and Policy Implications

To consider the role of criminal law in the corporate context, we first described how the concept emerged. Originally, corporations were not criminally liable at all because of the intensely personal moral evaluation associated with criminal law and its general requirement of individual criminal intent. As restrictions on corporate criminal liability fell in the late 19th century, critics frequently decried the odd fit between the intentionality usually required in criminal law and corporate prosecutions. Yet despite this opposition, prosecutors, legislatures, and judges have long upheld these prosecutions, primarily on pragmatic grounds. Criminal penalties are justified, according to this view, not