Examining corporate blameworthiness in relation to federal organizational sentencing for probation and corporate monitors.

Organizations that have benefitted from the commission of federal crimes committed by their employees may be sentenced to federal criminal penalties. Two of these potential penalties include probation and the requirement to implement a corporate monitor. The federal guidelines provide suggestions for sentencing probation that echo the theoretical focal concern of blameworthiness. This research used eight years of United States Sentencing Commission data covering 2011 to 2018 (n= 1,224) to examine if organizations were being sentenced to probation and monitoring consistent with the federal guidelines and focal concern of blameworthiness. The study examined nine potential measures of blameworthiness and two key criminal offenses representing protection of the community. The results revealed no significant findings for blameworthiness for probation but some significance for the type of offense, showing that protection of the community is more predictive of being sentenced to probation than any measure of blameworthiness. For corporate monitoring, the only significant finding was that criminal purpose organizations were more likely to be sentenced to monitoring. These results are discussed in terms of policy implications, limitations, and future research