Bribing employees of a company to perform corrupt actions should obviously be criminal. It’s ridiculous to say that it shouldn’t.
Paying high prices above board and openly for services is not fraud or corruption, bribing an employee to break clear standards and policies at their work place absolutely is.
Clearly, the proper enforcement of your execution of your employer's code of conduct && your boss's instructions needs to be handled by police and prosecutors, paid out of tax dollars. I'm glad you live in a place so flush with cash, and so tranquil such that this looks like a good use of the time and money of the state.
OTOH, we could accept that no ratable harm has been done to the public at large, and that this comes down to a private dispute between the university, the bribee, and the briber, where the latter two could be sued by the former for negligence in performance and tortious interference respectively. Civil law provides remedies for this, what is possibly achieved by making it criminal?
Corrupt societies hurt everything they touch. Decriminalizing bribery, as you suggest, would help turn the USA into a stereotype of a third world country - where government officials and private businesses alike demand graft and bribes at every step of a business transaction.
Moving money like that is also, inter alia, going to corrupt the income tax system - if employees are receiving a significant percentage of their income through cash bribes from customers, it’s unlikely they’d report it properly on their income tax.
These laws seem quite reasonable to me. Do you also believe an employee stealing or embezzling funds from their employer should be a civil, not criminal matter?
Edit: to add, some of the colleges in the admissions scandal were public, not private colleges - USC and UCLA. So bribery of the officials in that case was bribery of an employee of the state, not just a private business. It should be obvious that legalizing bribery of state employees is a very dangerous path to go down.
Corrupt societies hurt everything they touch. Decriminalizing bribery, as you suggest, would help turn the USA into a stereotype of a third world country - where government officials and private businesses alike demand graft and bribes at every step of a business transaction.
No low-trust society ever legislated its way into becoming a high-trust society. I remember America before the "honest services mail fraud" statute was in place, and contra your assertion, 1987 America didn't resemble a third world corruptocracy anymore than it does today.
if employees are receiving a significant percentage of their income through cash bribes from customers, it’s unlikely they’d report it properly on their income tax.
s/bribes/payments/ ...this is a risk you run by allowing cash. Of course, the risks of not having cash as a method of payment are different, and in my thinking more substantial.
Do you also believe an employee stealing or embezzling funds from their employer should be a civil, not criminal matter?
Of course! While we're at it, I also believe that tax fraud is a criminal offense. Note that none of these need the contrivance of honest service fraud to have been well prosecuted in the past, nor should they need the federal prosecutor's favorite GOTOs of mail & wire fraud to secure a true bill from a grand jury.
Edit: to add, some of the colleges in the admissions scandal were public, not private colleges - USC and UCLA. So bribery of the officials in that case was bribery of an employee of the state, not just a private business. It should be obvious that legalizing bribery of state employees is a very dangerous path to go down.
So...any state employee? I mean, bribing elected officials and officers of the court is already illegal; I really don't lump college admissions officers (or college garbagemen, lifeguards, sysadmins, psychiatrists) into the group of people the corruption of whose duty is so serious as to merit prosecution in federal courts, simply by dint of where they get their paycheck from.
Comments
Bribing employees of a company to perform corrupt actions should obviously be criminal. It’s ridiculous to say that it shouldn’t.
Paying high prices above board and openly for services is not fraud or corruption, bribing an employee to break clear standards and policies at their work place absolutely is.
Clearly, the proper enforcement of your execution of your employer's code of conduct && your boss's instructions needs to be handled by police and prosecutors, paid out of tax dollars. I'm glad you live in a place so flush with cash, and so tranquil such that this looks like a good use of the time and money of the state.
OTOH, we could accept that no ratable harm has been done to the public at large, and that this comes down to a private dispute between the university, the bribee, and the briber, where the latter two could be sued by the former for negligence in performance and tortious interference respectively. Civil law provides remedies for this, what is possibly achieved by making it criminal?
Corrupt societies hurt everything they touch. Decriminalizing bribery, as you suggest, would help turn the USA into a stereotype of a third world country - where government officials and private businesses alike demand graft and bribes at every step of a business transaction.
Moving money like that is also, inter alia, going to corrupt the income tax system - if employees are receiving a significant percentage of their income through cash bribes from customers, it’s unlikely they’d report it properly on their income tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_bribery
These laws seem quite reasonable to me. Do you also believe an employee stealing or embezzling funds from their employer should be a civil, not criminal matter?
Edit: to add, some of the colleges in the admissions scandal were public, not private colleges - USC and UCLA. So bribery of the officials in that case was bribery of an employee of the state, not just a private business. It should be obvious that legalizing bribery of state employees is a very dangerous path to go down.
Corrupt societies hurt everything they touch. Decriminalizing bribery, as you suggest, would help turn the USA into a stereotype of a third world country - where government officials and private businesses alike demand graft and bribes at every step of a business transaction.
No low-trust society ever legislated its way into becoming a high-trust society. I remember America before the "honest services mail fraud" statute was in place, and contra your assertion, 1987 America didn't resemble a third world corruptocracy anymore than it does today.
if employees are receiving a significant percentage of their income through cash bribes from customers, it’s unlikely they’d report it properly on their income tax.
s/bribes/payments/ ...this is a risk you run by allowing cash. Of course, the risks of not having cash as a method of payment are different, and in my thinking more substantial.
Do you also believe an employee stealing or embezzling funds from their employer should be a civil, not criminal matter?
Of course! While we're at it, I also believe that tax fraud is a criminal offense. Note that none of these need the contrivance of honest service fraud to have been well prosecuted in the past, nor should they need the federal prosecutor's favorite GOTOs of mail & wire fraud to secure a true bill from a grand jury.
Edit: to add, some of the colleges in the admissions scandal were public, not private colleges - USC and UCLA. So bribery of the officials in that case was bribery of an employee of the state, not just a private business. It should be obvious that legalizing bribery of state employees is a very dangerous path to go down.
So...any state employee? I mean, bribing elected officials and officers of the court is already illegal; I really don't lump college admissions officers (or college garbagemen, lifeguards, sysadmins, psychiatrists) into the group of people the corruption of whose duty is so serious as to merit prosecution in federal courts, simply by dint of where they get their paycheck from.