Justice for The Super Rich. Too Rich to (Keep in) Jail. How to Buy Your Way to Freedom!

[evildevil]

Our outrageous Enron-style justice system
Jeffrey Skilling's reduced sentence exposes old and new double standards poisoning how America treats defendants

There is Too Big to Jail - and now there is Too Big to Keep In Jail

Comments

[tsu_]

If we're returning back to aristocracy system, I propose we also take a leaf out of history and start putting these fuckers into stocks *pelts eggs*

[evildevil]

Nah, we should just bring back the guillotine out of commission. I am sure France can lend us theirs.

[aviv_b]

So the moral is if you are going to be a criminal think big, really big.

[gambitia]

Refuge in audacity!

[kahluaandcream]

We watched The Smartest Guys in the Room in my corporate communication class, and what really got to me wasn't the swindling of their employees (although that by itself was heinous), it was the way Enron treated California like its own personal piggy bank, and how no one gave a fuck that their manipulation of the market was actively destroying people's lives. They can throw the bad accounting at Fastow but the corporate culture that callously disregarded human life was all Skilling.

The documentary is available for free here if you are interested. It's very well done.

[meadowphoenix]

I have so many questions this article doesn't answer. Why is the justice department's overhead so high they can't prosecute these appeals the same way as any other defendants? Are they afraid he'll bankrupt himself on appeals so that he won't have to give the people's pension he stole nothing? The victims probably feel double-teamed if they're getting a settlement they didn't want.

I don't understand why we should pretend that petty thievery isn't easier to do again than pension fraud though. The problem with that line about recidivism isn't some sort of double standard on how one views recidivism of theft. Some theft is easier than another. The problem is assuming that the sentence's main purpose is to lessen recidivism. I personally don't think that's so, and I don't think we should take recidivism into account when determining white collar crime.

Moreover, the honest services law SCOTUS limited recently is ridiculously vague. But I found it hilarious that Scalia thinks that law is vague but gets so specific on the vaguest

[skellington1]

Your recidivism comment is interesting. I'd generally say that for most blue collar crime, reducing recidivism should be a high priority. But for the huge white collar crime, 'making an example' of someone seems like a more important thing to do -- because these are crimes of planning, not crimes-of-the-moment (where the threat of punishment isn't nearly as important to determining behavior). But that's my gut reaction; I've no idea if anything bears it out.

[otana]

I've been reading a fascinating book lately, called The Psychopath Test. It starts off with general psychology, talking about serial killers and such, and then delves into the probabilities that many CEOs may have psychopathic traits and that this is a big part of why they're successful (the author spent a decent amount of time interviewing one of the ex-CEOs of Sunbeam). They have no qualms about fucking over other people to raise profits and feel absolutely no remorse when things tank.

It's a really startling book, it brings up a lot of interesting points that click with this article and it's exactly why I get so upset when these people get released from prison early or just get a smack on the back of the hand. Because the chances of them doing this all over again are very, very high.

* Note: I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I just found the concept fascinating and very, very unsettling.

[adalmin]

Is it the one by Dr. Hare? I don't have my kindle next to me so I don't remember the title, heh.

The thing is, psychopathic traits don't necessarily mean that people make uber-rational, emotionless decisions. They make decisions with callous disregard to other people, sure, but they are also making decisions with reduced learning capacity and impulse control. Your average, middle-of-the-range psychopath isn't going to have the foresight or the inclination to quietly destroy something.

I think CEOs are just normal, everyday douchebags. Psychopathy is adored in the media for some stupid reason and people are too quick to pin successful yet cruel CEOs on a possible mental illness, when in reality the symptoms of psychopathy are detrimental to running anything for a long period of time.

[otana]

No actually, but it does feature interviews with Dr. Hare, both positive and negative.

You could very well be right. I'm still halfway through the book right now and I don't want to claim any kind of expertise in psychology, the article just pinged me.

[adalmin]

Was it a book by this guy? http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/

I would definitely pick up the original book by Dr. Hare ("Without Conscience," found my kindle!); it's a very good book and would temper some of Jon Ronson's ideas. For one thing Ronson's a journalist, not a scientist, and for another it seems like his primary focus is on a single case study (Dunlap). It's a bit simplistic. In Dr. Hare's book, the best bits were actual conversations with multiple, different psychopaths, so you can get a feel of their thought processes, and how they display as much variation in terms of intelligence etc. as any other group of people.