The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it had charged 34 people and companies for failing to file timely disclosures about their dealings in company stock. Nearly all the cases settled for fines of up to $150,000.
While the SEC says these charges represent important violations on their own, they’re also part of a larger “broken windows” strategy of enforcement, modeled after a policing theory first coined in the 1980s. The idea is that if you clamp down on little infractions, you’re more likely to deter big-time crime.
via Why the SEC is all about ‘broken windows’ | Marketplace.org.