I really don't understand the severity of criminal justice system punishment. SBF got sentenced to 25 years for a white collar financial crime while a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2 people, while DUI and ran over 100mph on a local street with 35mph limit got 26 months sentence forb2 vehicular homicide.
Vehicular deaths are almost always under prosecuted in the US.
This does not mean that it should be legal to defraud people of billions of dollars, ruin countless lives, and harm many more.
This is a rare case where a white collar crime was appropriately punished. Sam showed no remorse, and no evidence that he would not engage in similar crimes in the future. He earned this time.
Hopefully he’ll reform and be worthy of early release; but candidly I doubt it. I think he’s irredeemable.
The money he stole and defrauded is lifetimes worth. Lifetimes of economics stolen from people. Lifetimes of stresses caused on people because of what he stole. How many people may have ended their lives because they lost everything? How many silenced voices are there in pain because of his fraud?
White collar criminals can and should be likened to serial killers in the severity of their crimes. They spread invisible miseries indiscriminately, near entirely without justice or recognition. I am glad one of them is finally being properly punished.
Motor crimes are punished leniently because almost everyone drives, and every driver can imagine themselves making a mistake behind the wheel and they don't want that mistake to ruin their life or the lives of their loved ones.
I'm not saying it's right. But it's the tacit consensus we maintain to make ourselves comfortable with the risks of piloting deadly machines every day.
I don't know if it can summarize books correctly always, it almost always does; and I also don't know if there's just a bias in publishing about race relations because that sells.
But it seems right to me that the most orthodox opinion is that racial bias, drug policy and socioeconomic status are the biggest factors in the severity of sentencing in general.
So you are referencing two acutely exceptional cases - a white collar crime by a rich person that only somewhat interacts with drug abuse of Aderrall that is acutely severely punished, and a drug-related crime that is acutely poorly punished.
Not that this holds up to scrutiny, and there are certainly issues with fungibility of lives and money, but let's say the value of a life in the US is $10 million. $10 billion in fraud is 1,000 lives claimed. The sentence could have been worse.
SBF operated with forethought and malice. He intended to deceive people. He was trying to commit fraud.
Hometown guy did not intend to crash or kill anybody.
Now the results of hometown guy's actions were more direct and severe, but had he had the choice, he would not have crashed and killed anybody. He's not a criminal, just a fucking idiot.
Yeah I don’t buy it. I suspect most DUI cases were conscious decisions made while sober. You don’t accidentally drive to a bar. You go there with plans to drink knowing full well you plan to drive back drunk.
If you go out to drink, you don’t bring your car. If you know you need to drive later, you don’t drink.
They might be drunk when they are driving, but they very much put themselves into a situation where it was the likely outcome while sober.
You think he woke up that day and said to himself, "Today, I'm going to get drunk, drive my car, speed, crash, and kill two people."
No. He did not. Everything that happened was likely unplanned. Hence, no forethought. And I doubt he was trying to hit anybody. Hence, no malice.
Yes, he still made those choices and they were bad choices. So he does need to make restitution. But the fact that he wasn't intentionally trying to do what he did makes his offense different than SBF's.
Now, is there an issue that our penal system is ultimately more punitive than rehabilitory? Of course, but even from a punitive standpoint, accidental murder should warrant less punishment than intentional large-scale multi-billion dollar fraud. We can't base punishments solely on the outcome of an event. Intent of the perpetrator has to matter.
White-collar criminals doing fed time are serving "easier" time than those in state prisons.
That said, I've personally known of two people who were convicted of DWI vehicular manslaughter, and they both received 15-year sentences, so 26 months seems to be an aberration.
