Why We Let White-Collar Criminals Get Away with Their Crimes

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/books/review/big-dirty-money-jennifer-taub.html

by pseudolus • 6 years ago

41 21 6 years ago

sasaf5• 6 years ago

Undoing the clickbait:

many judges seem to believe that a fall from grace is punishment enough, especially since white-collar defendants (often older white men) pose little danger to society, at least with respect to committing violent crimes.

heavenlyblue3• 6 years ago

Which, if you think about it, works the other way around: the person gets a ton of media coverage supporting how dodgy they can be; which gives their future employer a direct sign of what they could be hired to do.

You don’t even need to ask for it; just hire them and not stop them from continuing with their previous methods.

srtjstjsj3• 6 years ago

It's more that many judges believe that white color criminals break the same sort of laws that the judges do, so it's not so bad. This becomes clear when you judges that excuse violent crimes like rape when perpetrated by rich white (not just in the collar) men.

Gibbon1• 6 years ago

Years ago on HN I posted a link to an essay by a appellate court chief justice that basically claimed that.

Poor people need the threat of prison to keep them in line.

Middle class people need the threat of loss of money to keep them in line.

The wealthy only need the loss of their good reputation to keep them in line.

That flies in the face of everything I know about poor people. For them their reputation is the only thing of value they have.

tolbish• 6 years ago

His solution is a vague sentence at the end:

Solving it will require a broad shift in an American culture that celebrates the accumulation of wealth and too often turns a blind eye to — or even glorifies — the success of the white-collar criminal.

Food for thought: what does the phrase "law and order" mean to you? Does it mean to aggressively prosecute all crimes, or certain more visible crimes? I don't think I've ever seen the phrase "law and order" applied to white collar criminals.

heavenlyblue3• 6 years ago

I think there’s a lot of culture “we have to do it this way because the real world is frightening and complex and therefore you have to be dodgy to succeed”.

We need real conservatives today. With a strong outlook for the future. Not the 60-year-old pant-shitters given up on the ideas our society was built upon.

avmich2• 6 years ago

We need real conservatives today.

Conservatism as an idea is morally deficient. We live in a changing world, especially at some periods, and what we need is adaptation of agreements to new ways of life propelled by increasing possibilities, from tech and quality of life.

There are places for conservatism, stemming from slowly changing human nature, but for now it looks more like an exception than the rule.

Popular vision of conservatism is hardly defendable today. Real - real - conservatives today would be progressives. AOC, Sanders, this kind. Not because they propose sticking with non-working mechanisms - they don't - but because they correctly see the ideas, intents of rules proposed for society - at times when changes weren't that stark.

Edit: this is an opinion.

cheph• 6 years ago

I don't think I've ever seen the phrase "law and order" applied to white collar criminals.

Well normally it is applied when one side in a politically charged issue is running cover for some crime and the other side wants to highlight this.

I'm not sure who provides cover for white-collar criminals - but I'm sure once you find them you will soon hear the phrase law-and-order coming from the opposing political side.

pjc50• 6 years ago

"law and order" to me means ramping up the brutality of the response to crime, and non-criminal nuisance, largely for its own sake. It's about the imposition of order, and the spectacle of policing, not the actual crime level as reported in any statistics.

The notorious "repetitive beats" section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Or... is the kind of thing I mean; rave culture involved fairly minor crimes, trespass and noise pollution, but because it annoyed the rural middle class there was huge demand for a clampdown.

frequentnapper• 6 years ago

"annoyed" is a rather dismissive way to phrase it. I'm a light sleeper and it would be torture to me at night and would affect my quality of life tremendously. I wouldn't be able to focus on family or work if I couldn't get good quality sleep.

srtjstjsj3• 6 years ago

A nuisance is non criminal when it's something you personally like, even if it hurts abroad swath of society?

js2• 6 years ago

The operative word in "law and order" always ends up being order, not law. Law ends up used selectively to enforce order. White collar criminals aren't disrupting the order of things, so no need to prosecute them.

In America, the correct phrase should be "rule of law." Under a "rule of law" society, white collar criminals would be prosecuted. As to aggressively, no, not necessarily. Predictably and fairly are much more important.

Many conceptions of the Rule of Law place great emphasis on legal certainty, predictability, and settlement, on the determinacy of the norms that are upheld in society, and on the reliable character of their administration by the state. Citizens—it is said—need predictability in the conduct of their lives and businesses. There may be no getting away from legal constraint in the circumstances of modern life, but freedom is possible nevertheless if people know in advance how the law will operate and how they have to act if they are to avoid its having a detrimental impact on their affairs. Knowing in advance how the law will operate enables one to plan around its requirements.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273005

ponker• 6 years ago

Perhaps a good microcosm is the Las Vegas Strip. Street crime is extremely low on the Strip and nearby — muggings, car breakins, etc. That’s because the guys who run the most lucrative rackets in town, the casinos, simply don’t permit street thugs to ply their trade on the Strip — if you try to embark on a career as a petty criminal on the Strip, you’ll quickly find yourself in a dark basement with a guy whose neck is thicker than your thigh.

The country operates on the same principle — the “criminals” who get punished are the guys who sow chaos and disrupt the real racket in town, which is Corporatism.

jokethrowaway• 6 years ago

Let me guess, because rich people exchange favours with their rich friends in the government?

If humans were perfect and incapable of evil, we would have never needed a government in the first place. The problem is that a government is made up of the very same people who are capable of committing evil.

I think it's pretty naive to think that human beings will stop being evil just because they're in charge. Sure they will make a lot of gestures and speeches, give a few cents to homeless and poorly maintain some roads, just so people won't lift their heads from their smartphones.

The real problem here is that it's 2020 and we still have entities that centralise immense power without considering conflicts of interest.

This is not a US phenomenon, it's happening everywhere, it's been happening since the beginning of time and it's the real cause of inequality between the 0.01% and the rest.

COVardsStayHome• 6 years ago

Why should't we? If its a crime without a physical harm - I don't see a reason for a harsh punishment - fine them and let them go on their marry way.

woah• 6 years ago

It makes sense for violent crimes such as assault and robbery, and crimes that can easily turn violent, such as burglary and theft, to be punished more harshly than nonviolent crimes.

That being said, locking up perpetrators of victimless crimes, like drug dealers, drug users, and prostitutes is a travesty.

srtjstjsj3• 6 years ago

Why? Shutting off CA's electricity (Enron) killed more people than any simple murderer. Hooking millions on opioids causes violence. Stealing money via paperwork takes away the victims access to health care.

Street crime is a absolutely trivial compared to the harm that white collar crime does.

thundergolfer• 6 years ago

Yeah, it really only requires one to think one or two steps beyond the immediate act to see how horrible white collar crime is.

In a country full of uninsured citizens and underfed children, exactly how do people find billions in wage theft to be a minor crime? Only by thoughtlessness, I’d say.

Why We Let White-Collar Criminals Get Away with Their Crimes

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