POLICY ESSAY CORPORATE CRIME DETERRENCE The Elusive Deterrence of Corporate Crime Peter Cleary Yeager Boston University G iven the high manifest costs of corporate crime—to say nothing of its less ap- parent ones 1 —it should be surprising how little we know scientifically (hence, confidently) about how best to deter or limit it. As an idea, the concept of deter- rence is straightforward: Unwanted behaviors can be reduced in number if the costs of the acts are greater than their benefits, assuming that the decision maker is rational and the costs are imposed reliably and swiftly. And it has long been conventionally thought that corporate crimes should be among the most deterrable offenses because corporations are designed as quintessentially rational organizations built to pursue the highest gains (profits and market share) and to minimize their costs in the pursuit. Moreover, corporate executives should be especially sensitive to punishment threats from fear of losing their high status, income, and reputations. Although corporate behavior is certainly oriented to perceived risks and rewards, it is less sensitive to the law’s conventional sanctioning threats than the classic model of deterrence would suggest (Simpson, 2002; Yeager, 2007), a point first detailed by the legal scholar Christopher Stone in his book, Where the Law Ends (1975). In that classic text, he outlined a central irony: The complexities of a corporate organization put more responsibility on the law to limit business crimes than it bears for conventional crimes, 2 while making it more difficult for the law to meet this burden (Yeager, 2016). I shall have more to say about this dynamic in the following pages. Direct correspondence to Peter Cleary Yeager, 24 Crestwood Drive, Framingham, MA 01701 (e-mail: pcyeager@bu.edu). 1. Although we can obtain plausible dollar estimates of the costs of some types of corporate crimes, such as securities fraud, tax fraud, and some antitrust violations, it is another matter altogether to measure the financial, human, and social costs of such offenses as deadly industrial accidents, massive oil spills, chronic air and water pollution violations, and the pattern of fraud that contributed importantly to the economic crisis of 2008. And even plausible dollar estimates discount the human anguish and other social costs that often follow from corporate victimizations. 2. This point has to do with the often muted role of individual consciences in complex organizational settings. DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12201 C  2016 American Society of Criminology 439 Criminology & Public Policy  Volume 15  Issue 2