Anthony Arnold Ochieng

1 Research Paper Student's Name Instructor Institution Date 2 Research Paper Introduction Corporate crime in the United States affords several challenges when defining its scope and determining its frequency. These boundaries stand up from a spread of factors, every contributor to the complexities involved in appropriately assessing the volume of company wrongdoing. The troubles related to defining and determining the frequency of company crime can be attributed to the absence of consensus on its definition, the pervasive problem of underreporting, the elaborate nature of corporate systems, useful resource constraints, versions in regulatory enforcement. Corporate crime is hard to degree because of the shortage of a universally agreed-upon definition, underreporting, and complexity of corporate structures. Companies engaging in illegal activity frequently use strategies to conceal their behaviour, and victims may be reluctant to come forward out of fear of reprisals or the judicial system. Additionally, the complexity of company structures makes it difficult to characterize criminal sports to a particular entity and multiple actors and layers of involvement. Resource constraints also pose a considerable hurdle as it should measure company crime. Investigating and prosecuting corporate crimes requires huge financial, criminal, and human assets. Government corporations that were answerable for implementing corporate crime laws may also face boundaries in funding and workforce, mainly confined to investigations and prosecutions. Variations in regulatory enforcement throughout industries and jurisdictions contribute to the challenges in determining the frequency of company crime. The wonderful nature of company crime, frequently classified as white-collar crime, adds another layer of complexity to 3 its assessment. Additionally, the absence of a centralized database or repository that consolidates complete facts on corporate crime impedes efforts to accumulate complete statistics and impedes correct analysis of the frequency of company crime. In criminological theory, "corporate crime" refers to any illegal act committed by a corporation or any person acting on the corporation's behalf. The "corporate death penalty" (Grossman, 2015) refers to the possibility of judicial dissolutions for corporations or persons responsible for corporate wrongdoing. When the Act is broken, violators face criminal fines of $5,000,000 and about 20 years in jail. U.S. commercial corporations are subject to sweeping regulations covering these types of wrongdoing and behaviours under the country's Civil, Operational, and Criminal Law. Given the complexity of identifying and quantifying corporate crimes in the United States, this study would additionally compare the differences between the comparisons presented in several published studies. Wang and Holtfreter's research explain why some workers violate business norms by redefining the connections between financial success and illegal behaviour. In the article by Wang and Holtfreter, the authors offer research using strain and chance concepts to examine the direct interactions that impact the occurrence of corporate crimes within different industries. The writers use evidence from Clinard and Yeager's study of unethical business practices to support their claims (Wang & Holtfreter, 2012). In contrast, Simpson et al. thoroughly review the effects of interventions on corporate crime deterrence in their book Corporate Crime Deterrence: A Thorough Review. White-collar offences, criminal organizations, and state-sponsored businesses are the subsets of corporate crime (Simpson et al., 2014). Business procedures, corporate responsibility, financial disclosures, and fraud prevention are all areas sought to address (Ahmed et al., 2010). Regulations, punitive acts, non-punitive measures, regulatory policies, co-related 4 punishments, and numerous treatments are the six main categories into which academics have traditionally sorted interventions to explain the prevalence of corporate crime. Crimes of noncompliance at the company's various demographic levels are affected by these legal interventions. Therefore, data fragments based on compliance and noncompliance audits are summed up to honor the effects of these corporate criminal acts. Financial statement fraud, stock market manipulation, bribery, false marketing claims, fraud, and incompetence are all examples of corporate crimes. White-collar FBI agents combine corporate or employee criminal activity into their corporate crime investigations. Because of the financial and political backing they receive, those who commit such crimes are generally portrayed as wealthy and powerful. In his book, Alex Sepinwall cites the B.P. oil spill and subsequent massive clean-up to argue that governments should be more involved in investigating and punishing corporate crimes that aim to mislead investors. Mismatching financial statements to avoid paying taxes to the United States government is cited as an example of a major corporate crime by the author (Sepinwall, 2011). The government must limit criminal liability and update corporate crime legislation to achieve this goal. The scandal surrounding these procedures exemplifies the pervasiveness of bribery in business settings. As a result, people in the United States are becoming increasingly willing to break the law and more likely to try it. Corporate crimes have far-reaching effects on people's personal and professional lives and the company's reputation. Therefore, the results of these crimes extend well beyond the corporation's walls and place a tremendous burden on the shoulders of all employees. Sepinwall aims to evaluate the criminal liabilities of these corporations for all the crimes committed by its members to provide a more nuanced justification for these diagnoses. On the other hand, the author sees the negatives as a chance to lash back at corporate authorities for all 5 the ways American businesses break the law. Finally, the article displays a corporate consequences pattern that helps to elaborate corporate criminal ratios across the nation and serves as a cost representation for the future. The authors of this theory propose a metric for understanding how criminal offenders contribute to workplace crime by encouraging illegal behaviour among employees (Vieraitis et al., 2012). Denial of accountability, injury, victimization, condemnation of persons, and appeal to higher authorities are the five primary methods in the neutralization theory to justify illegal behaviour. The authors have also provided evidence from recent studies to support their claims that white-collar criminals use neutralizing strategies when investigating the illicit operations of U.S. firms. In contrast, the authors examine whether or not there is any evidence that gender plays a role in encouraging criminal behaviour in the workplace. Both publications' findings provide a bivariate look at how gender disparities in offending decisions aided by neutralization strategies play out (Wang & Holtfreter, 2012). The 2016 allegations against Wells Fargo's banking unit workers serve as an important case study for estimating the prevalence of corporate crime in the United States. Over a million unlawful accounts were allegedly sold to unidentified account holders, further embarrassing the Wells Fargo Corporation's leadership (Witman, 2018). In such cases, punishments directed toward the business's owners may include attempts at vengeance, deterrence, rehabilitation, and even incapacitation. Except for malicious intent on the part of employees, Dorothy S. Lund and Natasha Sarin argue that financial institution crimes and corporate crimes can be compared on the same scale. Both authors of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: An Empirical Study" have commented on new U.S. Department of Justice regulations that aim to reduce the severity of punishments for violations of the country's corporate criminal statutes (Lund & Sarin, 2021). The writers have narrowed their attention to the corporate crimes 6 committed by the personnel departments of large public and private enterprises. In doing so, they have pinpointed the causes of such wrongdoing. However, determining who is responsible for these corporate wrongdoings can be difficult because the perpetrators often maintain their everyday lives and routines even after committing a crime. Another challenge related to seeing misconduct on the job is spotting firm owners' covert activities to enrich their businesses at the expense of public standards and rules. As a result of their breadth and specificity, it might be difficult to classify the infringement undertaken by the firm while justifying the ban of these regulations and laws. White-collar crime was thus required as a long-term measure of corporate criminality in the United States. Therefore, Dorothy S. Lund and Natasha Sarin have assessed how federal punishments for corporate crimes are categorized and compared to the laws and regulations imposed in a corporation's internal structure. However, the authors Xia Wang and Holtfreter propose SAR records financial crimes institutional members commit. U.S. law enforcement agencies must file "Suspicious Activity Reports," or "SARs," whenever they suspect that money laundering, terrorist financing, or other federal offences may have taken place through the use of electronic funds transfer systems, unidentified financial transactions, or the purchase or sale of stocks. When employees discover illegal or unethical behaviour within the company, they are required to file SARs. After validating the legitimacy of the filing source, government agencies are obligated to act on the admission report. Therefore, regulating such unlawful conduct held by corporate bodies aids in more precisely identifying corporate crimes. Xia Wang and Holtfreter's suggestions are worthwhile, but it is usually too late when criminal organizations with significant political and economic might are brought to justice. Lund and Sarin argue that corporations are encouraged to engage in illegal activity because of the SAR's depiction of a corrupt relationship 7 between the government and the institution. The authors of Corporate Crime and Punishment: An Empirical Study (Lund & Sarin, 2020) discuss the steps taken by several U.S. government agencies to adopt the SAR filing requirements. The sources must be credible, relativity must be excluded, the enforced network must be justified, and the person filing the report must be safe. Because of these alterations, it is now less difficult to monitor and assess the scope of all corporate criminal activity within the territorial confines of the United States. In contrast, Sepinwall, 2011 suggests integrations founded on a new regulation that establishes a means to certify the causes involved in reporting criminal conduct. As a result, the increasing number of reported attempted crimes in the United States can be traced back to these new methods of assessing and characterizing corporate crime. The issue of breaking the rules of silence, however, persists. However, SAR does offer useful incentives for workers who are willing to take on the fight against such illegal practices within their firm. The difficulty of accurately assessing the state of mind during a financial crisis has been a persistent concern throughout the procedure of enforcing new regulations and laws meant to protect prohibitions. When it comes to monitoring such in-depth research of the reports and files given by U.S. firms, regulatory organizations become inefficient, leaving a gap through which business owners might commit corporate crimes like those that occurred on September 11. Moreover, it has been found that the authors of two separate works share the view that the larger companies found criminally impeached represent only the tip of an iceberg of corporate crimes. Corporations in the United States are divided into many categories based on the various reforms undertaken to determine the scope of their wrongdoing. Examples are human rights abuse, financial fraud, stock market manipulation, and dishonest medical practices. On the other hand, Corporate Crime claims that CEOs and CFOs must now sign off on their company's financial 8 reports before they are submitted at the end of the year. It ensures that regular employees are not negatively impacted if criminal charges are levied against the company. As a result, it will be simpler to ascertain the incidence of corporate crimes in the United States now that corporate culture's superiors and owners must authenticate their assertions more correctly and precisely. Finally, the behaviour of criminality is expected to be directly governed by the organizations under Administrative Law, which will resolve all the obstacles and challenges involved with characterizing these corporate frauds. Corporate crime in the U.S. is difficult to define and even more challenging to quantify. The lack of consensus on its definition, underreporting, complexity of company systems, resource constraints, versions in regulatory enforcement, the white-collar nature of company crime, and the absence of centralized data contribute to the difficulties in correctly assessing its incidence. Addressing these challenges requires collaborative efforts among government businesses, felony specialists, researchers, and policymakers. Enhancing reporting mechanisms, enhancing regulatory oversight, allocating good enough assets, and selling transparency are vital steps. In conclusion, according to criminological theory, corporate crimes are any illegal acts committed by a company or persons acting on the company's behalf. All three branches of American law—Civil, Administrative, and Criminal Law—have specific provisions for addressing certain types of wrongdoing and behavior. In addition, five scholarly articles were studied to examine the challenges inherent in identifying and quantifying corporate crimes in the United States. It has been shown that perpetrators of such crimes are often accorded the status of "wealthy" and "powerful" due to the financial and political backing they enjoy. Several legal and regulatory implementations have been set up to excuse the difficulties in determining these corporate crimes. Corporate crime in the United States is difficult to define and estimate because many violations 9 are committed covertly to reap additional benefits for firms. At the end of the paper, the authors argue that the criminality of corporations should be dealt with directly by the organizations under Administrative Law and that the vast corporations which have been legally prosecuted are simply the tip of the iceberg. 10 References Ahmed, A. S., McAnally, M. L., Rasmussen, S., & Weaver, C. D. (2010). How costly is the Sarbanes Oxley Act? Evidence of the effects of the Act on corporate profitability. Journal of Corporate Finance, 16(3), 352–369. https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v16y2010i3p352-369.html Drew Isler Grossman. (2016). Would a Corporate Death Penalty Be Cruel and Unusual Punishment? Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cjlpp/vol25/iss3/4/ Lund, D. S., & Sarin, N. (2021, December 1). Corporate Crime and Punishment: An Empirical Study. Papers.ssrn.com. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=- Sepinwall, A. J. (2018). 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