Follow POL on Twitter Vinny Sidhu
Legal Intern, Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy
As the overcriminalization problem has garnered more and more attention, the calls for reform have become increasingly audible in various aspects of federal, state, and local governments. The latest example comes to us from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Vikrant Reddy, TPPF's Senior Policy Analyst for the Center for Effective Justice, has just released a report detailing salient changes that should be made to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to make it more reliable and efficient. Ostensibly, the purpose of the statute is to minimize U.S. complicity in international corruption, but its ancillary effects tend to stifle any beneficial effects of the additional regulation:
The act is emblematic of all the worst aspects of creeping federal overcriminalization, the tendency of Congress to use criminal law to regulate behavior not traditionally considered criminal. The FCPA's most important terms are vague and provide limited guidance for potential defendants; it is enforced in a way that limits critical mens rea protections; and the law does not provide for a "compliance defense" that would allow corporations to demonstrate that violations were a result of rogue employees, rather than inadequate compliance regimes.
The general problem stems from the fact that the premise of the legislation does not account for the creation of a skewed incentive structure. In theory, the FCPA will deter U.S. corporations from using potentially illegitimate means to court business in countries that are deemed "high risk" by using the threat of exorbitant fines and penalties. In order for this linear-style logic to hold, legislators either did not consider the negative externalities involved, or simply deemed them minimal in relation to the benefits of the legislation. Either way, the FCPA has proven to cause significant problems in terms of increasing the uncertainty involved in a given investment, and thus diverting U.S. resources from economically and socially productive uses:
Ironically, in fact, there is evidence that the FCPA has had the counter-productive effect of discouraging American firms from investing in impoverished nations. There is also evidence that the FCPA has stunted the growth of U.S. companies by forcing them to maintain costly compliance regimes. Ironically, these regimes may not even be useful becasue prosecution ultimately depends on how a particular U.S. Attorney will choose to interpret a particular term.
An improved piece of legislation would take into account these proven negative effects, while maintaining the core corruption-preventing purpose of the FCPA.
In other overcrim news, the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy will soon be releasing a report detailing the changing nature of Deferred and Non-Prosecution Agreements, especially in relation to the increasing number of agreements being utilized by the DOJ and, recently, the SEC. It will also examine the scope and adequacy of judicial review over these agreements.
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