FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Los Angeles, 28 October 2026
A new monograph by M. S. Hussain looks at more than a decade of corporate crime settlements in England and Wales and asks whether they have done what Parliament intended. It is available today in paperback and ebook.
Sulis Academic Press, an imprint of Sulis International Press, today published Deferred Prosecution Agreements: Assessing the Effective Regulation of Economic Crime by Mohammed Subhan Hussain. The book asks a simple question about a scheme that has shaped corporate crime enforcement in England and Wales since 2013: has it worked?
Since 2013, deferred prosecution agreements, or DPAs, have let the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service settle criminal investigations of companies without a full prosecution. Schedule 17 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 set up the scheme. More than ten years on, Hussain asks whether it has met its legislative objectives and the public interest Parliament had in mind.
He uses Maria Mousmouti’s test of legislative effectiveness, which looks at a law’s purpose, content, context, and results, and compares the scheme with approaches in the United States, France, and Australia. The core of the book analyses every DPA concluded in England and Wales under six themes: corporate cooperation, corporate survival, judicial oversight, transparency, individual accountability, and victim compensation. He also looks at the cases where a DPA was refused.
The refused cases lead to the book’s sharpest finding. Smaller companies that reported themselves and cooperated were denied DPAs and prosecuted. Larger corporations that did not cooperate had their agreements approved. That raises the question of whether some corporations are too big to prosecute. Hussain concludes that DPAs have not fulfilled their founding purpose. The people directing corporate wrongdoing have escaped accountability, and judicial oversight remains limited. He recommends specialised courts for complex evidence and a firmer link between DPA proceedings and the prosecution of individuals.
The book is written for scholars and students of corporate criminal law, compliance and regulatory practitioners, and policymakers working on economic crime.
Deferred Prosecution Agreements is available in paperback (6 x 9 in, 201 pages, ISBN 978-1-958139-80-6, $29.99) and as an ebook ($29.99). The cover sets the title in cream on a deep burgundy ground, with a single copper rule beneath the subtitle.
Buy direct from Sulis: sulisinternational.com
Find it at your preferred retailer: https://books2read.com/Hussain-deferred-prosecution
About the Author
Mohammed Subhan Hussain completed an MPhil in Law at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. His research focuses on deferred prosecution agreements and corporate financial crime. He also works on commercial litigation, including insurance, banking, shipping, aviation, and sanctions disputes. His earlier Sulis title is Crimes of Honour (2022). He lives in London.
About Sulis International Press
Sulis International Press publishes select fiction and nonfiction from Los Angeles, Dallas, and London. Its Sulis Academic Press imprint publishes scholarly works for researchers, students, and informed general readers.
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