Corporate Criminal Liability for its Criminal Conduct

Abstract

This research is concerned with criminal responsibility of legal entities focusing on employers who are legal entities where their employees commit criminal offenses to a third party which is called “vicarious liability”. The criminal responsibility of the legal entity as an employer occurs when he or she shows intention towards the legal entity’s actions or consequences from the intention, resulting benefits to a legal entity. As the legal entity means a non-existent person, any actions are performed through its legal representatives. Thus, in considering whether the legal entity is responsible can determine from vicarious liability. The individual acts as a legal representative or a person whose duties are to perform any actions instead of the legal entity. In Thailand, legal provisions with criminal punishment authority upon legal entity for this case are not enough. As a result, the employers do not realize about safety of lives, bodies, belongings, freedom etc. of others as much as they should. As a consequence, some legal violations from employees lead to benefits for the employers. While, foreign countries have strict measures for the penalty of legal entity employers. The proper approach for the enactment that employers must be responsible for criminal penalty of the employees is derived by comparison between foreign laws and court judgments in order to make the employer who is legal entity focusing on carefulness to operate a business, prevent or control their employees’ behaviors that would not perform any criminal violation or cause any damage to other party.Therefore, the researcher will suggest the appropriate measure for define the specific criminal provisions to the juristic person which separates from the natural person in order to solve many problems according to the juristic act in the civil law system. Hence, the criminal punishment for the juristic person should base on the factor that affects to the juristic person’s cherish things by adjusting criminal punishments of juristic person specifically such as dissolution, operation prohibition or revocation of licenses, detention, cessation, exclusion from public bidding, prohibition on public fundraising, prohibition on the uses of cheque or credit cards, fine, confiscation, victim notification or pay compensation by the juristic person.This punishments should be enforced and legislated to general principle in Penal Code obviously for the corporate criminal liability.