Sentencing of White Collar Crime in Federal Courts: Interdependent Paths and Processes

• In Event: Understanding and Addressing Corporate and White-Collar Crime

Abstract

The general perception of the public, particularly in recent years, has been that the government’s response to white-collar crime is too lenient; the criminal punishment for white collar crimes is not enough; and only a handful of individuals go to jail, in spite of millions or billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. In the case of corporate offenders, many firms are seen as avoiding penalties all together, producing the concern that some firms may be “too big to jail” (Garrett 2014). The present research aims to unpack the multiple contingent and overlapping processes and pathways that work to produce criminal sentences for white collar crime at the federal level by applying a multistage sentencing process approach. Modern sentencing research acknowledges that sentencing decisions by judges are significantly shaped and constrained by decisions made by prosecutors and other actors earlier in the criminal justice system (e.g. Baumer 2013). This research responds to this analytic trend and employs data from the Federal Justice Statistics Program, which include administrative records from multiple agencies, allowing individual and corporate cases to be tracked over time as they are moved through the federal justice system.

Author

• Miranda A. Galvin, University of Maryland