The United States has all sorts of laws dealing with murder, manslaughter, reckless endangerment and the like, of which plenty of people are found guilty of these very crimes, each and every year. Yet, surprisingly, corporations, which are no more than an artificial creation by the state so that a group of people can join together to act thereof as a single united entity, and thereby solicit business via that entity, seem almost immune from suffering the ill effects of behavior which, if done by a given individual or group of individuals, would definitely be criminal. For instance, in regards to the gross and deliberate damaging and catastrophic pollution of waterways by a given corporation -- of which such water is thereby utilized unawares by those residents as drinking water to their individual harm; this should properly be seen as a criminal offense, with corresponding criminal penalties. So too, labor by personnel at a facility in which the safety standards have deliberately been relaxed so as to forego necessary maintenance expenses or the like, in which thereby these employees are subsequently harmed or die by those substandard conditions, should properly be seen as a criminal offense, with corresponding criminal penalties. Again and again, corporations that behave in a manner, underhanded or not, explicitly or not, that lead to the death or harming of innocent parties, whether those of their employment, or those advertently exposed to their bad behavior should and must be held accountable to those bad actions.
As things currently stand, the best way to get away with murder, manslaughter, or reckless endangerment really comes down to setting up a corporate entity, in the foreknowledge that by doing so, corporations have the opportunity to thereby make bucket loads of money, while simultaneously being personally protected from having to suffer the personal penalty for what would be considered to be crimes, if done by a person, so that they are thereby permitted as a corporate entity to play dice with those residents that live within the vicinity of their operation, as well as those employees that work for them in those unnecessarily dangerous and exposed conditions that leaves them susceptible to harm.
If this country truly desires to see corporations behave in a mature and responsible fashion that takes into full account their wrongful actions so contemplated, then it needs to start holding those bad people within those corporate enterprises, individually responsible for their actions that harm others. After all, if the tradeoff for these corporate entities essentially comes down to a construct in which if they are caught, they are corporately fined, and nothing much more -- in contrast to all the profits, bonuses, and stock options so awarded to those in the executive offices, then one can expect corporations to continue to perform in a manner in which their personal desire for the rewards of being greedy and irresponsible, will continue to outweigh their responsibility to be a good and principled corporate citizen.
The bottom line is that the whole point of having laws, rules and regulations, is that a civilized society needs structure that is fairly applied and with corresponding penalties so imposed for egregious actions that harm that society. To provide, more or less, a free "get out of jail card" to persons within corporations, is a grave mistake, for corporations are made up of people, and those people that do wrong and harm within those corporations to others, need to duly suffer for it.