Abstract/Summary

This thesis explores the UK’s approach to corporate bribery (and other economic crime) enforcement and the tools it uses to do so. When the Bribery Act 2010 (UKBA) came into force, its section 7 (s.7) offence imposed criminal liability for a corporate failing to prevent bribery. However, as well as a defence permeated by accommodative intentions and self-regulatory capacities, this form of criminality is increasingly enforced in characteristically regulatory/non-criminal ways via methods favouring non-prosecution, settlement and negotiation - in the form of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPA). Through a noticeable shift in regulatory and enforcement culture, the resulting inquiry is whether the landscape reflects a ‘failure to prevent’ or more a failure to prosecute. The research seeks to inform literature by proposing how the proclaimed prosecutorial stance of enforcement policy has been redefined and weakened by an inability to do so and replaced with cooperative methods that are too heavily reliant on corporate assistance and bargain and bluff tactics. Using a qualitative approach, the work offers views from practitioners in the field to help enlighten and understand the aetiology of current enforcement practices for corporate offending. Through an analysis the results illustrate that due to complexities in corporate criminal liability, changes in the approach to prosecutorial enforcement, limited adherence to enforcement rhetoric and policy, self-regulatory reliance, and a growing favourability for DPAs, the UKBA and correlative intent to impart an enforced self-regulatory culture is presently lacking clarity in the legal objective – redefining the symbolic application of the criminal law. The work proposes that the control of corporate bribery has therefore become paradoxical: actively promulgating investigation and enforcement, but in reality, succumbing to more amenable tendencies of reliance and settlement. Alongside concerns that point to enforcement inability, illogicality, and inequality - that are not indicated by legislative, policy and publicised intent - these have collectively and negatively impacted the enforcement regime. This research enhances the understanding of enforced self-regulatory practices used in corporate crime control and, drawing on responsive regulatory theory, offers important considerations and implications for policy and social scientific development. If serious corporate crime is to be treated as a serious criminal offence, this work reinforces the appropriate use of escalatory enforcement and prosecution - and not its habitual avoidance.