At a speech at the Heritage foundation a week ago, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein declared that there may be significant policy shifts in regard to how the Department of Justice handles and prosecutes white-collar crime and corporate crime cases. The announcement hints at a possible shift away from the Obama-era rule concerning white-collar crime and criminals. The Obama-era rule was tougher than previous administrations in prosecuting the crimes of corporations, however the measures enacted did not go far enough in deterring white-collar criminal behavior and deviance. However, there is a possibility that the Department of Justice may become more lenient in dealing with potential corporate offenders.

To begin with, in his declaration, Rod Rosenstein stated that the Department of Justice is facing the issue as to whether or not to punish corporations for criminal behavior or individuals. He argues that corporations should be criminally prosecuted as it is difficult to attribute blame and misconduct to persons involve in the complex processes an entire corporation engages in. There are significant problems to this approach. The first being that it is possible to hold both corporations and individuals accountable for criminal wrongdoing resulting in corporate behavior no matter how complex it is. And the second significant problem that arises is that stepping away from prosecuting individuals does nothing to deter this behavior from happening in the future. It is the result of individual actions and behavior that contributes to white-collar crime and white-collar deviance. These behaviors result in trillions of dollars in economic damages over the course of three years and that number continues to rise.

The second important point Rod Rosenstein mentioned in his statement was that he was planning on shifting away from the policy Sally Yates (former deputy attorney general) incorporated in handling white-collar offenders in that the DOJ would only be lenient to white-collar offenders in significant cases if they gave every single detail that was relevant to the case and only if those details had any impact on the case in question overall. Rosenstein further went on to say that he would want to take a step back from this rule in order to ascertain more information about white-collar crimes in order to address the entire issue as a whole by encouraging offenders to come forward and give information without suffering harsh penalties. This is a very big mistake. Any policy that aims to be more lenient to white-collar offenders regardless of the goal runs the risk of attracting even more white-collar criminal activity that will contribute to even more economic damages as a result.

The current Department of Justice seems intent on lowering punishments for white-collar criminal individuals in favor of being stricter on corporations on a whole as well as to speed up the processes of justice. However, this approach has dangerous consequences and could even serve to exacerbate the problems of white-collar crime the Department of Justice wishes to address.