3 ms·

Should you be jailed for your employees crimes?

jchw 7y ago
Higher pay grades equal higher responsibilities. Accountability for an incident cannot ever sit with a single individual in an organization, nor should it sit with no individuals. Why was this allowed to occur? What processes failed? If it’s an endemic issue, getting rid of employees at the bottom won’t prevent future issues and potentially future loss of life.
sb057 7y ago
Yes.
jacquesm 7y ago
That's a simple question with a complex answer. The answer is 'it depends'. Yes, there definitely are cases where execs should be jailed for their employees crimes, and others where that definitely should not be the case. For instance, if an employee of a company embezzles a bunch of money from either a customer or the company itself then the execs should typically not be culpable. But, if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the employee to do this, either directly or through the 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' method of communications (and there is corroborating evidence that this indeed happened, for instance the issues not being limited to single employees but being institutionalized) then yes, they should definitely be punished as though they themselves were the ones doing it. It should not be possible for executives to use employees as a cut-out layer when crimes are committed.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  > But, if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the employee to do this... or (and this often seems more likely) if the execs have not clearly instituted reasonably sufficient protocols to prevent X from happening... They are the buggers abundantly paid for good governance, after all.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Sure, but the more likely way in which these things go is: "Do what you have to do to make us pass those emissions tests" and "Get rid of that industrial waste" and so on. No clear command to do something illegal but the employee is left with two choices: do something illegal or end up not doing what they were told to do. Culpability is a thing that can be smeared out effectively across the layers of a large organization where each layer only sees the delta between the one above it and the one below it, the people that know the law and the consequences are safely (or so they think) insulated from the hands that commit the crimes and the hands that commit the crimes typically don't know the law. This situation has - as far as I know - never really been addressed explicitly in the law hence the institutionalization of 'the buck stops at the top'. Even if you don't know and even if you did not order it explicitly you are - and should - still be held responsible. The question at hand is if that should include criminal liability for all cases where the employees break the law and I think there are plenty of cases where employees breaking the law should not lead to culpability of management, for instance, those cases where employees gain an advantage for themselves at the expense of the company, the customers or the society they operate in. But in most other cases where the company gained an advantage the execs should be liable. That alone will get companies to behave like good (immortal) citizens.
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      My point is to exactly prevent this level of leeway being given to an employee. The execs must make it clear in writing how to do a significant task. If they do not, they are culpable for the outcome just as if they eg. forged the results themselves.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        That has a serious problem: you can not possibly see in advance what people are going to do and if there is one thing I've learned from a couple of decades of programming and working with teams no matter how clear you thought your writing was there will always be something or someone that will take the last bit of ambiguity and interpret it in some creative way. That's why there is such a huge gulf between US law and EU law: in the US, the letter of the law is all that matters, in the EU, where laws are a lot more ambiguously specified it is the spirit of the law that matters. So an EU executive could be found liable because the company violated the spirit of the law whereas a US executive would walk even though both companies would do the exact same thing. But once the letter of the law is violated - especially in so-called white collar crime - there is still no guarantee of a conviction because corporations have very large budgets to protect their execs and to try to find some legal loophole. I'm (very well possibly because I'm European) more in favor of laws that are interpreted as to the spirit of the law, simply because it makes people reason from some level of goodwill rather than by trying to maximize the take by legal hair splitting.

jchw 7y ago

Higher pay grades equal higher responsibilities. Accountability for an incident cannot ever sit with a single individual in an organization, nor should it sit with no individuals. Why was this allowed to occur? What processes failed? If it’s an endemic issue, getting rid of employees at the bottom won’t prevent future issues and potentially future loss of life.

sb057 7y ago

Yes.

jacquesm 7y ago

That's a simple question with a complex answer. The answer is 'it depends'. Yes, there definitely are cases where execs should be jailed for their employees crimes, and others where that definitely should not be the case. For instance, if an employee of a company embezzles a bunch of money from either a customer or the company itself then the execs should typically not be culpable. But, if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the employee to do this, either directly or through the 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' method of communications (and there is corroborating evidence that this indeed happened, for instance the issues not being limited to single employees but being institutionalized) then yes, they should definitely be punished as though they themselves were the ones doing it. It should not be possible for executives to use employees as a cut-out layer when crimes are committed.

tempguy9999 7y ago
> But, if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the employee to do this... or (and this often seems more likely) if the execs have not clearly instituted reasonably sufficient protocols to prevent X from happening... They are the buggers abundantly paid for good governance, after all.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Sure, but the more likely way in which these things go is: "Do what you have to do to make us pass those emissions tests" and "Get rid of that industrial waste" and so on. No clear command to do something illegal but the employee is left with two choices: do something illegal or end up not doing what they were told to do. Culpability is a thing that can be smeared out effectively across the layers of a large organization where each layer only sees the delta between the one above it and the one below it, the people that know the law and the consequences are safely (or so they think) insulated from the hands that commit the crimes and the hands that commit the crimes typically don't know the law. This situation has - as far as I know - never really been addressed explicitly in the law hence the institutionalization of 'the buck stops at the top'. Even if you don't know and even if you did not order it explicitly you are - and should - still be held responsible. The question at hand is if that should include criminal liability for all cases where the employees break the law and I think there are plenty of cases where employees breaking the law should not lead to culpability of management, for instance, those cases where employees gain an advantage for themselves at the expense of the company, the customers or the society they operate in. But in most other cases where the company gained an advantage the execs should be liable. That alone will get companies to behave like good (immortal) citizens.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    My point is to exactly prevent this level of leeway being given to an employee. The execs must make it clear in writing how to do a significant task. If they do not, they are culpable for the outcome just as if they eg. forged the results themselves.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      That has a serious problem: you can not possibly see in advance what people are going to do and if there is one thing I've learned from a couple of decades of programming and working with teams no matter how clear you thought your writing was there will always be something or someone that will take the last bit of ambiguity and interpret it in some creative way. That's why there is such a huge gulf between US law and EU law: in the US, the letter of the law is all that matters, in the EU, where laws are a lot more ambiguously specified it is the spirit of the law that matters. So an EU executive could be found liable because the company violated the spirit of the law whereas a US executive would walk even though both companies would do the exact same thing. But once the letter of the law is violated - especially in so-called white collar crime - there is still no guarantee of a conviction because corporations have very large budgets to protect their execs and to try to find some legal loophole. I'm (very well possibly because I'm European) more in favor of laws that are interpreted as to the spirit of the law, simply because it makes people reason from some level of goodwill rather than by trying to maximize the take by legal hair splitting.