They don't. For example, 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination do not apply to corporations. Also, corporations have a right to an attorney but one is not provided to them free of charge by the government.
> But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable...
Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling, Martha Stewart, and others put in jail for corporate crimes would disagree with you.
As much as those names you named are important, they are peasants compared to power wielded by the big guys.
What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle?
I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed by individuals, but more likely a miasma of incompetence that cannot be directly associated with any one person. It's more like we should arrest Harvard Business School professors for teaching MBA strategy wrong.
My comment was a broader point about why corporations never seem to have employees get charged. It’s because they usually aren’t liable and won’t get convicted by a jury, and the government subpoenas all the records and determined it won’t fly.
If you disagree with my assessment, you must think there is a conspiracy in which government lawyers collude with corporate leaders to protect them. That’s a very strong conspiracy. I’m not saying you are wrong, but recognize what you are asserting.
What is their role, their contribution to the company, if not "taking responsibility"?
And if that is not part of their task, how much cheaper can this role be fulfilled with sufficient impact by someone else?
How about prohibiting them from holding executive positions in the future?
But if we really can't attribute blame to specific individuals, your proposal is effectively collective punishment where individuals that are genuinely innocent are punished because of wrongdoings of other members of the group. From a justice perspective, we're in murky moral waters. An analogy would be to punish everyone in a shared household if we know that one member of that household committed a crime but we can't determine which one specifically (and let's assume that the innocent members of the household don't know and aren't hiding information). This would be a state of affairs that everyone would rightly protest. So we need to think carefully as to whether we want to enact your proposal.
The ultimate point being: you can still let them make decisions about their own lives if you want, but that doesn't imply you have to let them make decisions that affect other people's lives.
Previously on HN
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193699
They didn't even touch the Sheriff.
> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.
Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.
Which one is it?
In principal, it strikes me as a good idea - it promotes collective good behaviour, and responsibility for ones peers.