The United States Sentencing Commission is charged with collecting a vast amount of data regarding the sentencing of criminal defendants in federal courts. Among this data is a surprising amount of information regarding the organizations that take convictions in federal court for compliance and ethics failures. Many times, compliance and ethics professionals rely solely on current news to garner what information on compliance and ethics failures. The news, however, only covers a small fraction of the organizations that are charged with federal crimes. The data from the Sentencing Commission tells us the full story—a story that has more surprising outcomes than you might expect. In this episode, Eric explores the 2015 data on organizational sentences. You may be surprised to learn that 90% of organizations that take federal convictions have less than 1000 employees.

What size organizations are most at risk?

What types of crimes are organizations being charged with?  

You’ll learn that many of the hot topics in compliance and ethics, like https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act (FCPA) violations, make up a very small percentage of the crimes that organizations take convictions for. It’s not just organizations that get charged, but often individuals with a relationship to the organizations will be charged as well. Eric discusses the data regarding these individuals and how you can use this data to help you make the case internally about the importance of strong compliance program.

The Upshot

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s data can tell us some very interesting and helpful things about the size of organizations that get in trouble, the types of offenses or actually the multiplicity of offenses that organizations find themselves charged with probably most importantly can talk very specifically about the collateral damage if you will that comes with a federal prosecution in the form of individuals that get prosecuted. These are all helpful pieces of information and you’re making the case internally for the necessity of compliance.

Three Questions with https://www.linkedin.com/in/amylilly09?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=uV15&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A14174090%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1478194551951%2Ctas%3Aamy%20lil (Amy Lilly), the Director of Corporate Ethics and Compliance at http://www.centerpointenergy.com/en-us/ (CenterPoint Energy) in Houston Texas

At CenterPoint Energy, Amy integrates value-based ethics into a compliance-based company. Amy is a leader in Houston’s compliance and ethics professional community and has an interesting perspective on the future of compliance and ethics.

If you a question you want answered on the podcast be sure to submit it on http://www.compliancebeat.com (ComplianceBeat.com) or reach out below. 

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Read Full Transcript

What do the Sentencing Commission data tell us about ethics and compliance programs? The Sentencing Commission, besides providing the seven guidelines for an effective ethics and compliance program, has a couple of other functions that are worth exploring. One is the vast amounts of data it collects annually and makes available to compliance officers. For many people in compliance their number one source of information about problems with compliance is through news reports. While using the news of the current corporate scandals that are making the headlines can be useful,...