> The DOJ certainly seems to think a law was broken.

And they charged the corporation. They also have a consent decree. You can be sure that under the consent decree both the corporation and everyone in it are under a microscope. A consent decree is, among other things, like probation. If they mess up again, the DOJ will drop the hammer.

A lot of people seem to think that punishment makes people care more somehow, but punishment is always a distant possibility at the time of the wrongdoing. People don't generally think they are committing serious wrongdoing, humans are really good at rationalizing our actions, especially when each individual action is a small step.

that just leads the blame onto a scapegoat. It doesn't fix the problem at heart - which is that the responsibility for safety has to be taken at the org at every level.

The CEO is the one who has the more power to avoid it and they have incredibly high salary often justified because they are "risk takers". They take the money, so they can take the responsibility with it. And for information, the law is like that in other countries I know.

>which is that the responsibility for safety has to be taken at the org at every level.

The CEO has enough power to prevent such a thing from ever happening (by that I mean he can easily create a morally corrupt company culture) and there is a very big profit motive to do so.

Things like company culture and focus on either shipping products fast to get as much cash as quickly as possible vs building quality products definitely comes from the top management. But this support needs to be something more than empty phrases in come corporate emails. Same principles as say in software development.

If middle managers and top engineers see that there is no reward in doing things right and taking time, in fact its shooting one's foot, then most folks +-align with this policy and move on. At the end almost everybody is in for the paycheck.

> The DOJ certainly seems to think a law was broken.

That fortunately doesn't matter.

To send someone to jail, you need to convince a jury they committed a serious crime.

I don't understand this comment. The DOJ bringing charges has to be step one towards that end. The same exact thing is happening with Boeing, we just didn't hear about it until after they negotiated a settlement. This happens all the time with plea deals. If they can't agree it goes to trial.

> The DOJ bringing charges has to be step one towards that end.

Sure. My point is that it's quite different from a conviction.