The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has a significant impact on corporate compliance practices through four primary policy / guidance documents that communicate the criteria it uses to evaluate the effectiveness of corporate compliance programs in its enforcement decisions.

Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI), a U.S. best practice community of organizations active in the area of ethics and compliance, recently conducted a Corporate Compliance Program (CCP) and DOJ Enforcement Policies survey that asked for Chief Compliance Officers’ views of the value and impact of these documents, as well as ways they felt the DoJ could further incentivise corporate compliance, encourage corporate self-disclosure and cooperation in the event of violations.