Once again, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is blasting federal bank regulators for their lack of criminal prosecutions following the financial crisis, and railing against the belief that executives are “too big to jail.”

A hearing convened by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Tuesday gave legislators the opportunity to grill regulator representatives on the state of their agencies rulemaking and efforts to ensure stability in the financial markets. Warren took the opportunity to come out swinging, yet again, over the lack of criminal prosecutions involving bank employees and executives.

Three banks – Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup – “have admitted to breaking the law” and have settled with the government for, combined, more than $35 billion. “The law on this is clear,” Warren said. “No corporation can break the law unless an individual within that corporation broke the law. Yet, despite misconduct at these banks that generated tens of billions of dollars in settlement payments, not a single senior executive at these banks has been criminally prosecuted.”

“I know your agencies can’t bring prosecutions directly, but you are supposed to refer cases to the Justice Department when you think individuals should be prosecuted,” she said, addressing the panel of regulators. “So, can you tell me how many senior executives at these banks you have referred for prosecution?”

Taking one for the team, Daniel Tarullo, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, spoke up and stressed that, even when individuals are involved in a banking misdeed, problems are usually organizational in nature. Regulators do, when warranted, insist that firms discharge implicated employees, whether or not they have been prosecuted, and can take steps to bar individuals from working at banks and other financial firms, he said, adding that information is regularly shared with DoJ officials to inform their decisions regarding civil or criminal actions.

The answer failed to satisfy Warren, who reiterated that not one referral for prosecution has been made. “I want to be clear about the contrast here,” she said. “After the savings and loan crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, the government brought over a 1,000 criminal prosecutions and had more than 800 convictions. The FBI opened nearly 5,500 criminal investigations because of referrals from banking regulators and investigators.”

“The reason we punish illegal behavior is for deterrence and to make sure that the next banker who is thinking about breaking the law remembers that a guy was hauled out of there in handcuffs,” Warren added. “These civil settlements don’t provide deterrence. The shareholders for the companies pay the settlements and senior management doesn’t pay a dime. In fact, if you are like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, you might even get an $8.5 million raise for negotiating such a great settlement. Without criminal prosecutions, the message to every Wall Street banker is loud and clear: If you break the law you are not going to jail, but you might end up with a much bigger paycheck.”

Warren’s concerns were echoed by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “People shouldn’t be able to buy their way out of culpability,” he said.

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