What do the Sentencing Guidelines say?
The Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations offer guidance for when a company’s compliance program will merit mitigation of a sentence: “The hallmark of an effective program to prevent and detect violations of the law is that the organization exercised due diligence in seeking to prevent and detect criminal conduct by its employees and other agents. Due diligence requires at a minimum that the organization must have taken the following types of steps: (1) The organization must have established standards and procedures to be followed by its employees and other agents that are reasonably capable of reducing the prospect of criminal conduct. (2) Specific individual(s) within high-level personnel of the organization must have been assigned overall responsibility to oversee compliance with such standards and procedures. (3) The organization must have used due care not to delegate substantial discretionary authority to individuals whom the organization knew, or should have known thro
