One especially hard thing for sentencing public policy is when every crime is compared to every other crime.
It is impossible, I think, to come up with a "ranking" of crimes that everyone can agree on. And because that's impossible, anyone can always point to a sentence of someone else who received too little or too much in comparison.
I understand the desire to scale sentences by impact. But, I personally think it would be reasonable to give SBF the same exact sentence even if he had defrauded people out of twice as much or half as much money.
An often forgotten aspect of sentencing is that once a criminal has done something evil, we still want there to be incentives for them to not do further evil things, as well as to co-operate with authorities.
That can play out into, say, giving both a murderer and a scammer 25 years in prison, provided that they turn themselves in and otherwise co-operate with the legal process.
I'm sure police officers would rather go into houses to arrest people knowing that whatever the suspect has done, they're going to get another 25 years in jail if they fight back. Arresting someone who has no hope at all, regardless of what they do, is simply more dangerous.
It is impossible, I think, to come up with a "ranking" of crimes that everyone can agree on. And because that's impossible, anyone can always point to a sentence of someone else who received too little or too much in comparison.
I understand the desire to scale sentences by impact. But, I personally think it would be reasonable to give SBF the same exact sentence even if he had defrauded people out of twice as much or half as much money.