Legislating Organizational Probation: State Capacity, Business Power, and Corporate Crime Control

Abstract

This study examines the development of organizational probation. That this sanction emerged from the long process of developing organizational sentencing guidelines as a clearly specified, widely available, and often binding sanction represents an unexpected statutory outcome: an interventionist, nonmarket sanction during a time of deregulatory free market policy and ideology. This outcome is explained through a multi-theoretical framework emphasizing the structural capacity of the primary lawmaking agency, the United States Sentencing Commission, the role of middle-level state workers, and the bounded rationality of strategic decisions made by business strategists and lobbyists.