Corporate death penalty - dissolution of the corporation - is an easy concept (even if used far too infrequently). But I wonder what would be corporate equivalent of prison time? For individuals, incarceration is about limiting their usual freedoms. So how could it work for a corporate entity? A temporary suspension of the legal person status?
Corporate "jail time" would be indistinguishable from "death penalty" in practice: suspending a corporation's ability to engage in contracts and do business basically means the corporation rapidly falls apart, existing contracts run out or get cancelled, employees don't receive pay checks, etc.
Corporations are basically a sizable chunk of the privileges people lose when going to prison but without the physical reality that guarantees a continued existence. In practice that physical reality manifests itself in the form of the actual human beings running the company and making its decisions, obviously.
So considering a corporation is more like a person without direct agency that relies on the care and supervision of trusted persons, it seems obvious misbehaviour of corporations should be treated as criminal negligence on the part of its caretakers, the people running it.
Alternatively the people running it are the corporation's physical manifestation and therefore the ones who should go to prison if the corporation is jailed (like how when a natural person is sent to prison, they are physically imprisoned rather than merely having their bank accounts frozen).
But all this navelgazing aside, the US is a country where civil assets can be arrested as suspected accomplices to crimes without bringing up any charges against their owners (civil forfeiture). It's clear the "corporations are people" narrative only exists to let certain people have their cake and eat it too, not to make any sense if taken literally.
> Corporate "jail time" would be indistinguishable from "death penalty" in practice: suspending a corporation's ability to engage in contracts and do business basically means the corporation rapidly falls apart, existing contracts run out or get cancelled, employees don't receive pay checks, etc.
How is this different from when a person goes to jail? They loose their job, house, many future chances for a job. We just don't kill people when they're unprofitable.
Personal insolvency generally doesn't kill the person. Corporate insolvency typically results in the corporation being dissolved, effectively killing it.
I'm not arguing that this is a bad thing. If anything I'm arguing that corporations shouldn't be granted people privileges because they are demonstrably not people. And that if the corporation misbehaves that means people need to be held liable, too.
Indicting a corporation (which is rare) is considered a "death sentence". Most other companies will not sign contracts with another company that has been Indicted (even if not convicted).
> A temporary suspension of the legal person status?
That's a start. A stronger limitation of their usual freedoms could also be modeled on the Voting Rights Act's preclearance[1] requirements. The corporation has the burden of proving to an independent regulatory panel that a proposed change will not have the effect of recreating the problem.
> But I wonder what would be corporate equivalent of prison time?
How about just prison time ? Corporations on their own can't do anything, they are just a legal fiction. The actual decisions are made and implemented by real human beings; they can be held responsible and put in jail.
