Social Engineering as an Infringement of the Presumption of Innocence: The Case of Corporate Criminality

I examine how deferred-prosecution agreements employed against suspected corporate criminality amount to a form of social engineering that infringes the presumption. I begin with a broad understanding of the presumption itself. Then I offer a brief description of how these agreements function. Finally I address some of the normative issues that must be confronted if legal philosophers who hold retributivist views on punishment and sentencing hope to assess this device. My judgment tends to be favorable. More importantly, I caution against the facile assumption that any means to infringe the presumption is necessarily an illegitimate part of penal practice.