Sen. Elizabeth Warren releases report criticizing criminal justice system

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a thirteen-page report Friday, entitled “Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy,” which argues against weak law enforcement for corporate crime.

The report details 20 cases in 2015 where federal agencies failed to properly punish corporate offenders.

Relaxed law enforcement, especially toward white-collar crime, enforces the idea to corporate offenders that they are not obligated to answer to the law, Warren said in a Friday press release.

“When government regulators and prosecutors fail to pursue big corporations or their executives who violate the law, or when the government lets them off with a slap on the wrist, corporate criminals have free rein to operate outside the law,” Warren said in the release.

Warren also said in the release that enforcing laws is just as significant as enacting laws.

“Putting a law on the books is only the first step,” Warren said in the release. “The second, and equally important, step is enforcing that law. A law that is not enforced — or weakly enforced — may as well not even be a law at all.”

Tamar Frankel, a professor in Boston University’s School of Law who teaches corporate governance, said it is difficult to hold corporate offenders accountable because of the large size of their companies.

“When you have very large corporations, it’s impossible for the top or the bottom or anybody to really control specific activities,” Frankel said.

Frankel said as a result, corporate cases are handled differently from other cases.

“The attitude inside a corporation is different from the attitude of the law, and that is where the problem lies,” Frankel said. “We have assumed that the law within the corporation is the law within the country, and that isn’t so.”

Frankel said in order to put corporate offenders on the same playing field as others, the United States must make proper sentencing the norm.

“And what we should do there, and [what] is being done, is look at some bad apples, look at some slippery slopes, look at where things are going to happen if they continue that way,” Frankel said.

Shea Cronin, a criminal justice professor in BU’s Metropolitan College, said the U.S. government needs to heighten standards in order to decrease the number of unpunished corporate offenses.

“The threat of regulatory oversight from the federal government is probably not sufficient to deter wrongdoing,” Cronin said. “Everybody accepts that the primary goal here is to promote compliance with particular rules, and I’m not sure the negotiated punishments we have seen or the settlements that we have seen are changing the calculus that corporations engage in.”

Cornelius Hurley, director of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, explained that in particular, banks are able to take advantage of the justice system in a way that is harmful to tax-paying citizens.

“Through the intercession of their regulators, we have made large banks not merely too big to fail, but immune from the consequences of their criminal acts,” Hurley said. “Such immunity only serves to encourage riskier activities by the largest financial institutions, leaving taxpayers to suffer the consequences of their acts.”

Several Boston residents said corporate criminals should be held accountable for their actions.

Ian Jones, 24, of Fenway, said well-known companies are held to higher standards.

“I work for a small business,” Jones said. “There’s definitely a stigma around corporate environments. I think major chains like Starbucks are held to more standards. Corporations with more money and fewer employees get away with more. I’m glad [Warren is] doing this though. It needs to change.”

Sean Hua, 21, of Kenmore, said more people need to be appointed to work with corporate offense cases.

“There needs to be more people to step up,” Hua said. “It’s a difficult task, but it is necessary, or else we’re going to let [these corporations] keep abusing their power.”