Penalties under the guidelines include fines and imprisonment, as well as "corporate probation", which is mandatory in the case of a businesswhich does not have an effective compliance program in place. Probation involves intrusive federal monitoring of the organization and adoption of a government authored compliance program, which can be far more expensive and invasive than a voluntary compliance program could have been.

The Guidelines take a carrot and stick approach in order to encourage businesses to police themselves. Each crime or violation is assigned a base fine, which is either increased or decreased based upon the presence of certain aggravating and mitigating factors. One such mitigating factor is the existence of an effectivecorporate compliance program.

Under the Guidelines, an organization which has such a program may receive a substantially reduced fine, and maybe able to avoid corporate probation andcriminal prosecution altogether.