7 ms·

I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment. As a deterrent and as a punitive, I ge

I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment. As a deterrent and as a punitive, I get it, but even life sentences don't seem to deter crimes that can yield those punishments.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Who should carry the burden of re-offense without remorse? People make mistakes, to err is human, and forgiveness should be provided to those with the capacity to change (ie harm less). Compassion is important. But if you don't believe you've done anything wrong, can we not project future potential outcomes? Prison duration is a risk assessment of harm reduction. EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear.
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Ostensibly the same thing as after a 22 year sentence, just later.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Ostensibly.
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      > The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Aren't we doing society a disservice by ever allowing criminals to leave prison? > Ostensibly I chose this word carefully, because I think a lot of our preconceived notions on criminal behavior have not been validated by the real world, including the deterrent effects of long-term imprisonments.
      - sangnoir 3y ago
        > Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines provided by law as written by legislature, considered case-law, the specifics of this case and applied their professional judgement to come up with a 25-year sentence as an appropriate one for the crimes committed. If the defendant disagrees, they can appeal the sentence to get a second opinion. You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison sentences - I'll apply it to your argument in turn - why send guilty people to prison at all? What's the difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60, or 6000? A sense of proportion is the difference between a black-and-white world and the one we strive for in reality.
        nkozyra 3y ago
        > Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines provided by law as written We know the mechanics of why it was chosen. What I was asking was by your logic, 22 is less protective of society than 102, which makes me question the validity of "it protects society" reasoning. Why protect less when we have a quantifiably greater level of protection? > You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison sentences This is incredibly dismissive. We have arbitrary sentencing guidelines. They are based on reasoning, but that doesn't mean they are correct. They are fluid, change from locale to locale, and have unpredictable efficacy. > why send people to prison at all? What's the difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60 You see, I don't think that's reductio ad absurdum at all. It's a valid question. You can argue for it and against it, but it isn't absurd or contradictory on its face. > A sense of proportion is the difference between a black-and-white world All you're saying here is 6000 > 1. We know this. I'm asking why 6000 is right, 1 is wrong, and why we throw away the other 5998.
        sangnoir 3y ago
        > What I was asking was by your logic, 22 is less protective of society than 102, which makes me question the validity of "it protects society" reasoning The answer to all variations of your underlying question in your post is because when handing down sentences, there are multiple, oft-conflicting considerations. We don't only consider societal safety - if we did we'd just jail everyone for life. 6000 is right because it is the right point of balance between keeping society safe and the rights of the imprisoned, while reflecting the seriousness of the crime without being cruel or unusual. Prison sentences inherently take away rights from the prisoner, and this is yet another thing that's thrown onto the pile of considerations for tradeoffs which individually lengthen or shorten the term of imprisonment. It's not a binary decision like you propose (imprisoned vs not imprisoned for any crime), but finding the right balance point (likely region or volume) on multidimensional axes. I'm not a trial judge, but I can think of the following factors off thr top of my head: nature of crime committed, remorse, amount of harm, restitution (if any), sentencing guidelines in the law, probability of recidivism, safety of society, safety of defendant, sentences issued on similar cases in the past, appeals on similar cases in the past, prosecutor sentencing recommendations, defense sentencing recommendations, time already served, culpability, the number of charges defendant is found guilty of and whether they can be served simultaneously or not, etc. You're ignoring all of these and projecting the sentence to a single dimension (societal safety). You haven't answered why you think we imprison people in the first place (or if we should). We cant have a fruitful discussion about which sentence durations are "better" without knowing what metrics we are measuring.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      What safety does society get with him in prison that it wouldn't get with him outside prison and restricted from any "financial" type job? I don't really see the harm in him working at McDonalds, for example, except maybe he'd embezzle from the till, so put him on fries.
      - tsimionescu 3y ago
        If he's free, he could very well pretend he's someone else and skirt the restrictions, or convince someone else to act as his pawn.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  > EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear. No. Prison should be about punishment combined with rehabilitation, neither at the expense of the other. It is perfectly OK to say that punishment, the infliction of pain, for a crime, is warranted even if it has no rehabilitative value, assuming that it is not demeaning or cruel. Why? Several reasons: 1. Punishment has it's own value for the sake of justice. A hypothetical: Imagine there was a drug, with a 10% fatality rate, that perfectly rendered the receiver incapable of murder without any other side effects. They just perfectly gain control of their emotions and reason, or something to that effect. If a person goes and murders 50 individuals, but takes the drug and lives; they've been theoretically perfectly rehabilitated and need to be let back into society, right? If you think, "of course not," you are now admitting that punishment has a value by itself. EDIT: Also, this hypothetical, actually exists. Imagine this case with SBF. Imagine if the only penalty for his actions, were that he could not run a banking organization ever again, or hold more than $1,000,000 in any account that he controls. Perfectly rehabilitated, my hypothetical with the drug, in one swoop. He will never be able to commit this crime again. I think I might very well run and do a financial fraud tomorrow. At least I'll enjoy the high life for several years. You are literally telling me, in that case, I could live for years, possibly decades (if I'm Madoff), and my only punishment will be that I can't do it again. After all, it's only about rehabilitation for myself; and to do otherwise would be punishment for punishment's sake. 2. If punishment is not given out fairly, and is only contingent upon rehabilitation; you are ignoring the rights and feelings of the victims and focusing too heavily on the rights and feelings of the criminal. Victims have feelings and rights, and considering they are the harmed, their feelings and rights ought to be first priority, and the criminal's second. Otherwise, victims feel the need to take things into their own hands. Always have, always will, as part of human nature. That's how you get societal meltdown, followed by vigilantism.
  - jddj 3y ago
    > If you think, "of course not"... And if you think it sounds reasonable? While there's some benefit (deterrence) to there being perceived costs to bad behaviour, it's arguable whether punishment for the sake of punishment stands up on its own merits. In your proposed world, where murderousness is recognised as a treatable illness, it doesn't really seem reasonable to punish to punish or to imprison as a deterrent.
- latexr 3y ago
  > People make mistakes, to err is human Hard to make that argument when discussing fraud, which by definition is intentional deception.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jimkleiber 3y ago
I remember reading an article/study that said we think we punish for deterrence, but we mostly punish out of spite. edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-its-about-spite https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...
- dartos 3y ago
  What’s the difference?
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Deterrence makes someone not want to commit the crime because of fear of the consequences. Retribution ("spite") is about getting even. Rehabilitation is about making it so that the person is less likely to offend again when released and more likely to be of positive value to society. Removal is about locking someone up so they cannot do more crimes. A good prison system should balance all four.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment) and it seems like something where people would bring in a ton of bias.
      - rustcleaner 3y ago
        Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
        bee_rider 3y ago
paulcole 3y ago
Is it a deterrent? SBF knew Madoff got 150 years. The perceived benefit of getting rich and famous can make it easy to overlook the downsides of getting caught.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nkozyra 3y ago
  > SBF knew Madoff got 150 years. My perception of some of these financial crimes - Madoff included - is they start off with a small slip, rather than a full dive into fraud. A lot of times it snowballs while the person responsible keeps searching for a way out. I wonder at what point SBF would have even said what he was doing was immoral. If you're running a Ponzi scheme you think you can salvage, would you compare yourself to Madoff, or would you think "I'm trying to set things right"?
  - skulk 3y ago
    From what I read on Wikipedia, Madoff didn't make a single investment with the money given to his wealth management program. He deposited it all into a bank account and paid people out of the same bank account. This is notably different from SBF's case.
  - yau8edq12i 3y ago
    So what are you saying? That prison isn't a deterrent for financial crimes?
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      I absolutely did not say that. Rather, I'm suggesting that in the eye of the beholder, a very clear case of fraud might be self-perceived as a bump on the road to lawful, legitimate financial dealings. So the question is if SBF didn't see himself as committing the same crimes as Madoff (even if he was), would Madoff's sentencing and fate even register as a potential deterrent?
    - 3y ago
lapetitejort 3y ago
I've always been in favor of the Norway sentencing model [0]. 21 years is the max prison sentence, with 5 year extensions possible. Punishment must always carry the possibility of rehabilitation and return to society, even in the most extreme cases. A small amount of people will show no remorse or willingness to improve and will remain in prison for life. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Norway
- mlyle 3y ago
  I think that might be the best normal path, but I think there's a (relatively small) population of offenders who we can know have no real prospect of rehabilitation. Perhaps the more important distinction: if we're going to let people out of prison eventually, we should make sure that prison is a place that is set up in the best way to make that eventual return to society successful. Right now, it feels like we do the opposite.
- mrkeen 3y ago
  > with 5 year extensions possible. Ouch! I hadn't heard of this before, and I gotta say I'm not a fan. I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details. If you maintain your innocence, is that a lack of remorse? Can you be any kind of 'model citizen' in prison - engaging in charity or volunteer work? Who brings the +5 year charge or provides evidence for it? The prison staff who don't find your personable, or the shrink who doesn't think you're taking the sessions seriously (if shrink visits in prison exist)?
  - professoretc 3y ago
    > I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details. Yep, instead of "you definitely get out of prison after X years have passed" you instead get "you get out of prison in 21 years! (or never, depending on how we feel)".
    - lapetitejort 3y ago
ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
Imo 5 means 3 and that is too low for most serious crimes, it feels almost like an incentive to just not get caught, more than an incentive to not do it all. Losing 20 years of your life though will have a drastic effect on the rest of your life. As it should for some crimes. Or is your argument we should skip from 10 to death, I'm honestly not sure.
hintymad 3y ago
I guess the nuance is that SBF can get paroles if he behaved well. That is, this 25 years can be punitive, but he will also has a chance to earn some trust and reduce the punishment.
- anamexis 3y ago
  Federal prisons do not have parole.
  - volkl48 3y ago
    There is a possible "good behavior" reduction, but the maximum of that works out to around 15% off the sentence. He'll serve at least 21 of those years or so.
- harambae 3y ago
  He can’t get parole, but can get RDAP, halfway house, first step act, good behavior (15%), in theory a rule 35b (not sure what he knows), and whatever else gets invented in the future. Maybe a commuted sentence but probably not for a while. Probably out in 17 years which is still a long time. I was most surprised by the recommendation of medium security. Not sure how well Sam will do in a medium.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
The problem is, criminals think they will not be caught. There is a deterrent, but the difference between 10, 20 and 30 years is abstract for someone who thinks they are not caught.
thereddaikon 3y ago
At some point its not about deterrent or social benefit but justice. People can say its not fair or productive for people like him to be locked up forever. Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life? And likely a comfortable well off one at that. He already had a privileged family and I have no doubt it will be easy for him to profit off his story once he gets out. The hardly seems right.
- batch12 3y ago
  Does his jail time do anything that helps his victims other than make them feel good? Are there other ways he could make reparations?
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    It protects potential future victims - both from SBF and from those who might want to emulate him. Which is why I think the sentence is too low. There are other ways he could make reparations. One would be to have one-to-one meetings with his victims, where they tell him in person how his actions affected them. There's a fair chance it would bounce right off SBF, because he clearly has serious personality issues. Then again, maybe not.
- bawolff 3y ago
  > Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life? That sounds more like retribution than justice. I.E. wanting to cause him pain because he caused pain in others. Of course, i don't have a better answer by any means.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    It is deterrence: it sends the message of don't do the same thing or you'll wind up in prison for a long time. It really isn't retribution, this kind of enforcement is meant to scare other potential white collar criminals into not breaking the law as well.
cccybernetic 3y ago
This presumes a theory of justice where "social benefit" is relevant at all — not everyone accepts this.
bawolff 3y ago
> I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment. Arguably, the social benefit is to deter more major crimes. If all crimes were X year sentences, then once you comitted one crime you may as well continue, since the punishment is the same either way.
FabHK 3y ago
So, legal theory provides three reasons for punishment: 1) revenge ("an eye for an eye") - that's not considered a factor anymore today except as an upside-limit on the punishment, ie, the punishment should not exceed the damage caused. Here, the damage caused was immense, so don't think that'll be a limiting factor. 2) specific prevention - keep that particular perpetrator off the streets, so they can't commit crimes again. There's some argument that old people commit fewer crimes, so when the perpetrator is old enough, one can let them go. Maybe one shouldn't let SBF out until he's older than Madoff was... 3) general prevention, aka deterrence - make sure that the punishment (in conjunction with the probability of being caught) is sufficient to discourage others from committing the crime. This is problematic as apparently most perpetrators seem to think that they won't be caught (which is why capital punishment doesn't necessarily reduce crime rates). I think in this case it's good that the many, many crypto "operators" see that there is some downside in scamming people.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Who should carry the burden of re-offense without remorse? People make mistakes, to err is human, and forgiveness should be provided to those with the capacity to change (ie harm less). Compassion is important. But if you don't believe you've done anything wrong, can we not project future potential outcomes? Prison duration is a risk assessment of harm reduction. EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear.

nkozyra 3y ago
> What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Ostensibly the same thing as after a 22 year sentence, just later.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Ostensibly.
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    > The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Aren't we doing society a disservice by ever allowing criminals to leave prison? > Ostensibly I chose this word carefully, because I think a lot of our preconceived notions on criminal behavior have not been validated by the real world, including the deterrent effects of long-term imprisonments.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      > Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines provided by law as written by legislature, considered case-law, the specifics of this case and applied their professional judgement to come up with a 25-year sentence as an appropriate one for the crimes committed. If the defendant disagrees, they can appeal the sentence to get a second opinion. You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison sentences - I'll apply it to your argument in turn - why send guilty people to prison at all? What's the difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60, or 6000? A sense of proportion is the difference between a black-and-white world and the one we strive for in reality.
      - nkozyra 3y ago
        > Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines provided by law as written We know the mechanics of why it was chosen. What I was asking was by your logic, 22 is less protective of society than 102, which makes me question the validity of "it protects society" reasoning. Why protect less when we have a quantifiably greater level of protection? > You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison sentences This is incredibly dismissive. We have arbitrary sentencing guidelines. They are based on reasoning, but that doesn't mean they are correct. They are fluid, change from locale to locale, and have unpredictable efficacy. > why send people to prison at all? What's the difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60 You see, I don't think that's reductio ad absurdum at all. It's a valid question. You can argue for it and against it, but it isn't absurd or contradictory on its face. > A sense of proportion is the difference between a black-and-white world All you're saying here is 6000 > 1. We know this. I'm asking why 6000 is right, 1 is wrong, and why we throw away the other 5998.
        sangnoir 3y ago
        > What I was asking was by your logic, 22 is less protective of society than 102, which makes me question the validity of "it protects society" reasoning The answer to all variations of your underlying question in your post is because when handing down sentences, there are multiple, oft-conflicting considerations. We don't only consider societal safety - if we did we'd just jail everyone for life. 6000 is right because it is the right point of balance between keeping society safe and the rights of the imprisoned, while reflecting the seriousness of the crime without being cruel or unusual. Prison sentences inherently take away rights from the prisoner, and this is yet another thing that's thrown onto the pile of considerations for tradeoffs which individually lengthen or shorten the term of imprisonment. It's not a binary decision like you propose (imprisoned vs not imprisoned for any crime), but finding the right balance point (likely region or volume) on multidimensional axes. I'm not a trial judge, but I can think of the following factors off thr top of my head: nature of crime committed, remorse, amount of harm, restitution (if any), sentencing guidelines in the law, probability of recidivism, safety of society, safety of defendant, sentences issued on similar cases in the past, appeals on similar cases in the past, prosecutor sentencing recommendations, defense sentencing recommendations, time already served, culpability, the number of charges defendant is found guilty of and whether they can be served simultaneously or not, etc. You're ignoring all of these and projecting the sentence to a single dimension (societal safety). You haven't answered why you think we imprison people in the first place (or if we should). We cant have a fruitful discussion about which sentence durations are "better" without knowing what metrics we are measuring.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    What safety does society get with him in prison that it wouldn't get with him outside prison and restricted from any "financial" type job? I don't really see the harm in him working at McDonalds, for example, except maybe he'd embezzle from the till, so put him on fries.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      If he's free, he could very well pretend he's someone else and skirt the restrictions, or convince someone else to act as his pawn.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
> EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear. No. Prison should be about punishment combined with rehabilitation, neither at the expense of the other. It is perfectly OK to say that punishment, the infliction of pain, for a crime, is warranted even if it has no rehabilitative value, assuming that it is not demeaning or cruel. Why? Several reasons: 1. Punishment has it's own value for the sake of justice. A hypothetical: Imagine there was a drug, with a 10% fatality rate, that perfectly rendered the receiver incapable of murder without any other side effects. They just perfectly gain control of their emotions and reason, or something to that effect. If a person goes and murders 50 individuals, but takes the drug and lives; they've been theoretically perfectly rehabilitated and need to be let back into society, right? If you think, "of course not," you are now admitting that punishment has a value by itself. EDIT: Also, this hypothetical, actually exists. Imagine this case with SBF. Imagine if the only penalty for his actions, were that he could not run a banking organization ever again, or hold more than $1,000,000 in any account that he controls. Perfectly rehabilitated, my hypothetical with the drug, in one swoop. He will never be able to commit this crime again. I think I might very well run and do a financial fraud tomorrow. At least I'll enjoy the high life for several years. You are literally telling me, in that case, I could live for years, possibly decades (if I'm Madoff), and my only punishment will be that I can't do it again. After all, it's only about rehabilitation for myself; and to do otherwise would be punishment for punishment's sake. 2. If punishment is not given out fairly, and is only contingent upon rehabilitation; you are ignoring the rights and feelings of the victims and focusing too heavily on the rights and feelings of the criminal. Victims have feelings and rights, and considering they are the harmed, their feelings and rights ought to be first priority, and the criminal's second. Otherwise, victims feel the need to take things into their own hands. Always have, always will, as part of human nature. That's how you get societal meltdown, followed by vigilantism.
- jddj 3y ago
  > If you think, "of course not"... And if you think it sounds reasonable? While there's some benefit (deterrence) to there being perceived costs to bad behaviour, it's arguable whether punishment for the sake of punishment stands up on its own merits. In your proposed world, where murderousness is recognised as a treatable illness, it doesn't really seem reasonable to punish to punish or to imprison as a deterrent.
latexr 3y ago
> People make mistakes, to err is human Hard to make that argument when discussing fraud, which by definition is intentional deception.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jimkleiber 3y ago

I remember reading an article/study that said we think we punish for deterrence, but we mostly punish out of spite. edit: here's the article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-its-about-spite https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...

dartos 3y ago
What’s the difference?
- mlyle 3y ago
  Deterrence makes someone not want to commit the crime because of fear of the consequences. Retribution ("spite") is about getting even. Rehabilitation is about making it so that the person is less likely to offend again when released and more likely to be of positive value to society. Removal is about locking someone up so they cannot do more crimes. A good prison system should balance all four.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment) and it seems like something where people would bring in a ton of bias.
    - rustcleaner 3y ago
      Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
      - bee_rider 3y ago

paulcole 3y ago

Is it a deterrent? SBF knew Madoff got 150 years. The perceived benefit of getting rich and famous can make it easy to overlook the downsides of getting caught.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nkozyra 3y ago
> SBF knew Madoff got 150 years. My perception of some of these financial crimes - Madoff included - is they start off with a small slip, rather than a full dive into fraud. A lot of times it snowballs while the person responsible keeps searching for a way out. I wonder at what point SBF would have even said what he was doing was immoral. If you're running a Ponzi scheme you think you can salvage, would you compare yourself to Madoff, or would you think "I'm trying to set things right"?
- skulk 3y ago
  From what I read on Wikipedia, Madoff didn't make a single investment with the money given to his wealth management program. He deposited it all into a bank account and paid people out of the same bank account. This is notably different from SBF's case.
- yau8edq12i 3y ago
  So what are you saying? That prison isn't a deterrent for financial crimes?
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    I absolutely did not say that. Rather, I'm suggesting that in the eye of the beholder, a very clear case of fraud might be self-perceived as a bump on the road to lawful, legitimate financial dealings. So the question is if SBF didn't see himself as committing the same crimes as Madoff (even if he was), would Madoff's sentencing and fate even register as a potential deterrent?
  - 3y ago

lapetitejort 3y ago

I've always been in favor of the Norway sentencing model [0]. 21 years is the max prison sentence, with 5 year extensions possible. Punishment must always carry the possibility of rehabilitation and return to society, even in the most extreme cases. A small amount of people will show no remorse or willingness to improve and will remain in prison for life. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Norway

mlyle 3y ago
I think that might be the best normal path, but I think there's a (relatively small) population of offenders who we can know have no real prospect of rehabilitation. Perhaps the more important distinction: if we're going to let people out of prison eventually, we should make sure that prison is a place that is set up in the best way to make that eventual return to society successful. Right now, it feels like we do the opposite.
mrkeen 3y ago
> with 5 year extensions possible. Ouch! I hadn't heard of this before, and I gotta say I'm not a fan. I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details. If you maintain your innocence, is that a lack of remorse? Can you be any kind of 'model citizen' in prison - engaging in charity or volunteer work? Who brings the +5 year charge or provides evidence for it? The prison staff who don't find your personable, or the shrink who doesn't think you're taking the sessions seriously (if shrink visits in prison exist)?
- professoretc 3y ago
  > I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details. Yep, instead of "you definitely get out of prison after X years have passed" you instead get "you get out of prison in 21 years! (or never, depending on how we feel)".
  - lapetitejort 3y ago

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago

Imo 5 means 3 and that is too low for most serious crimes, it feels almost like an incentive to just not get caught, more than an incentive to not do it all. Losing 20 years of your life though will have a drastic effect on the rest of your life. As it should for some crimes. Or is your argument we should skip from 10 to death, I'm honestly not sure.

hintymad 3y ago

I guess the nuance is that SBF can get paroles if he behaved well. That is, this 25 years can be punitive, but he will also has a chance to earn some trust and reduce the punishment.

anamexis 3y ago
Federal prisons do not have parole.
- volkl48 3y ago
  There is a possible "good behavior" reduction, but the maximum of that works out to around 15% off the sentence. He'll serve at least 21 of those years or so.
harambae 3y ago
He can’t get parole, but can get RDAP, halfway house, first step act, good behavior (15%), in theory a rule 35b (not sure what he knows), and whatever else gets invented in the future. Maybe a commuted sentence but probably not for a while. Probably out in 17 years which is still a long time. I was most surprised by the recommendation of medium security. Not sure how well Sam will do in a medium.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

The problem is, criminals think they will not be caught. There is a deterrent, but the difference between 10, 20 and 30 years is abstract for someone who thinks they are not caught.

thereddaikon 3y ago

At some point its not about deterrent or social benefit but justice. People can say its not fair or productive for people like him to be locked up forever. Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life? And likely a comfortable well off one at that. He already had a privileged family and I have no doubt it will be easy for him to profit off his story once he gets out. The hardly seems right.

batch12 3y ago
Does his jail time do anything that helps his victims other than make them feel good? Are there other ways he could make reparations?
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  It protects potential future victims - both from SBF and from those who might want to emulate him. Which is why I think the sentence is too low. There are other ways he could make reparations. One would be to have one-to-one meetings with his victims, where they tell him in person how his actions affected them. There's a fair chance it would bounce right off SBF, because he clearly has serious personality issues. Then again, maybe not.
bawolff 3y ago
> Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life? That sounds more like retribution than justice. I.E. wanting to cause him pain because he caused pain in others. Of course, i don't have a better answer by any means.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  It is deterrence: it sends the message of don't do the same thing or you'll wind up in prison for a long time. It really isn't retribution, this kind of enforcement is meant to scare other potential white collar criminals into not breaking the law as well.

cccybernetic 3y ago

This presumes a theory of justice where "social benefit" is relevant at all — not everyone accepts this.

bawolff 3y ago

> I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment. Arguably, the social benefit is to deter more major crimes. If all crimes were X year sentences, then once you comitted one crime you may as well continue, since the punishment is the same either way.

FabHK 3y ago

So, legal theory provides three reasons for punishment: 1) revenge ("an eye for an eye") - that's not considered a factor anymore today except as an upside-limit on the punishment, ie, the punishment should not exceed the damage caused. Here, the damage caused was immense, so don't think that'll be a limiting factor. 2) specific prevention - keep that particular perpetrator off the streets, so they can't commit crimes again. There's some argument that old people commit fewer crimes, so when the perpetrator is old enough, one can let them go. Maybe one shouldn't let SBF out until he's older than Madoff was... 3) general prevention, aka deterrence - make sure that the punishment (in conjunction with the probability of being caught) is sufficient to discourage others from committing the crime. This is problematic as apparently most perpetrators seem to think that they won't be caught (which is why capital punishment doesn't necessarily reduce crime rates). I think in this case it's good that the many, many crypto "operators" see that there is some downside in scamming people.