Durbin, Blumenthal, Scanlon Introduce Bicameral Corporate Crime Database Act

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and U.S. Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA-05) today reintroduced the Corporate Crime Database Act, bicameral legislation that would require the Department of Justice (DOJ) to collect, aggregate, analyze, and publish comprehensive data on federal corporate criminal enforcement actions.

“It’s time we made a coordinated effort to curtail corporate crime. Comprehensive, national data collection and a searchable, public database of the results of all federal enforcement actions against corporations would provide better oversight while informing DOJ’s corporate criminal prosecution practices,” said Durbin. “And that’s exactly what the Corporate Crime Database Actaims to do.”

“Our Corporate Crime Database Act helps hold white-collar criminals accountable and deter future crime. By creating a comprehensive national database on corporate criminal conduct and requiring DOJ to thoroughly document the Department’s enforcement actions against bad actors, our measure will protect victims and bolster corporate crime law enforcement,” Blumenthal said.

“By exposing corporate crime, we can make it harder for corporations to get away with murder,” said Scanlon. “The failure to do so allows corporations to avoid accountability when they engage in criminal behavior, and feeds into corporate culture that treats criminal behavior as an acceptable risk and criminal sanctions as a cost of doing business. Developing tools to hold corporations accountable for criminal behavior is all the more important in an era when the Trump administration has halted enforcement actions against over 100 corporate offenders and pardoned dozens of white-collar criminals, costing victims and taxpayers $1.3 billion in restitution and fines.”

“Amidst a worsening epidemic of corporate crime – rip-offs, fraud, deadly pollution, criminally unsafe workplaces, dangerous consumer products, suppression of safety information and more -- the Corporate Crime Database Act will enable the American people to see the full scope of the crime and violence inflicted by Big Business. It will show when administrations are tough on corporate criminals – and when they choose to give bad-actor CEOs a free pass. And, it will enable prosecutors to demand tougher sanctions on repeat offenders. The mere act of reporting systematically on corporate crime will be revelatory. America needs the Corporate Crime Database Act,” said Rob Weissman, Co-President of Public Citizen.

Specifically, the Corporate Crime Database Act would require the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) within DOJ to:

• Collect, aggregate, and analyze information regarding enforcement actions taken with respect to corporate offenses;
• Publish a database of such enforcement actions on the BJS website;
• Establish guidance for the collection and submission of information from each Federal agency that carries out enforcement actions with respect to corporate offenses; and,
• Submit an annual report to Congress including a description and analysis of the data collected, an estimate of the impact of corporate offenses on victims and the public, and recommendations forlegislative or administrative actions to improve the ability of Federal agencies to monitor, respond to, and deter instances of corporate offenses.

While serving as Chair of the Committee, Durbin held a hearing entitled “Cleaning Up the C-Suite: Ensuring Accountability for Corporate Criminals” to examine the downward trend of federal prosecutions of corporate crime.

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