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New Steps for an Effective Company Compliance Program

By David J. Laing
January 26, 2005

U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics indicate that companies charged with federal crimes have been doing an awful job of creating effective programs to detect and deter employees' criminal acts. According to the Commission, of the more than 850 companies convicted of crimes from 1995 through 2002, only two had a compliance program that a federal judge recognized as effective. In one respect, this is not surprising, as federal prosecutors routinely argue that if a company had an effective compliance program, the company wouldn't have committed the crime in the first place, and the court wouldn't be spending its time in a sentencing hearing.

On Nov. 1, 2004, significant revisions to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, including the Organization Sentencing Guidelines, took effect. The revised Guidelines include a new and expanded definition of “effective compliance and ethics program” for organizations in Section 8B2.1 and provide useful guidance on what a compliance program should include. The Guidelines' revisions significantly increase the requirements for an effective compliance program and mark the first major change to the Organizational Guidelines since they took effect in 1991. The revised Guidelines also respond to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which directed the Sentencing Commission to amend the Guidelines and related policy statements to ensure that they “are sufficient to deter and punish organizational criminal misconduct.”

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