Increasingly, corporations are setting up front groups - groups that sound like public interest groups but are established to defend business interests. Examples of such groups include the National Wetlands Coalition, a group supported by oil companies and real estate developers seeking to defeat wetlands protection legislation, and the Coalition for Vehicle Choice, a group funded by auto companies to combat fuel-economy legislation. Legal scholars have argued that criminal law would be devalued if it were used to penalize behavior not historically thought of as criminal in nature. But the public also learns what is immoral or shameful from what is branded as criminal. It is a legitimate social function to define socially intolerable conduct and teach the difference between right and wrong by bringing criminal cases against corporations and their executives for egregious conduct that injures, kills and steals.
Criminal sanctions are currently inadequate in deterring corporate wrongdoing.
The first comprehensive study of antitrust criminal penalties published in 1994 found that the average fine imposed on antitrust criminal price-fixing cases from 1955 to 1993 amounted to only a minuscule percentage of the optimal penalty. The authors said that optimal deterrence was achieved when the expected costs of the antitrust offense to the potential offender equals the external costs of the offense to society. But it is not being applied to corporate crooks. Though corporations steal millions of dollars, they are rarely convicted of criminal theft. Instead, they are often caught by company whistleblowers and charged by federal or state officials under the civil law.