The U.K.’s Second DPA Is Much Different Than Its First
Deferred prosecution agreements (not to mention non-prosecution agreements) are problematic across various points on a spectrum.
As U.S. use of such agreements has demonstrated (see here), alternative resolution agreements allow egregious instances of corporate conduct to be resolved too lightly without adequate sanctions and without achieving maximum deterrence (“under prosecution”) while at the same time, because of the “carrots” and “sticks” relevant to resolving corporate criminal liability, facilitate the “over-prosecution” of business conduct in instances in which it is an open question whether a legal violation actually occurred.