Criminality and Corporate Practices II : Criminal Law, Corporate Legal Sheltering, and Crimes Against Property

The contemporary legal regime in the United States extensively shields corporate officers from prosecution for acts equivalent to criminality under law and societal norms. An earlier paper presented a conceptualization of corporate equivalencies to murder and assault. In this paper, I extend it to crimes against property, and more specifically to theft by taking or disposition, by deceit, and by extortion. A point of conceptual departure is found in the Model Penal Code (MPC) of the American Law Institute, which provides a generic rubric of types and classification of crimes. The MPC conceptualization of theft is extended and interpreted to identify plausible equivalencies to victimization of the public by corporate actors. Three case studies provide holistic examples of each type of theft. The revised interpretation of criminal theft in the corporate context is then applied to modeling and standards of criminal victimization, and to evidentiary requirements, using the case studies to illustrate applications. The challenge of implementing a reinterpretation is also briefly considered