Consent Agreements, Decrees, and Orders

IN THE U.S. justice system, a consent agreement refers to a voluntary approval or mutual understanding between two or more people. Such an agreement may then provide authorization for some act or purpose. An order can be defined as a written command or direction that is delivered by a judge or a court. Similarly, a related term, decree, serves to convey a declaration of a court by announcing legal consequences of the facts in a particular case. In the field of white-collar crime, all three of these terms are typically heard most often with regard to corporate crime.

Beginning with the early work of Edwin Sutherland, who conducted research on both white-collar crime and corporate crime, criminologists have been interested in the punishment of these offenders. ...