Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a huge double standard with white collar crime where we worry if we are prosecuting the "right" people. Was this person the ring leader or just a foot soldier? Clearly what he did was wrong. If he were a poor drug dealer there would be little sympathy for the arguement that he was being overcharged. But with an upper class person who we can relate to, we worry the system is unfair.

How about having a system that is tough on white collar criminals, but imprefect? No one seems to mind a system like that for other crimes.

View on HN

> with an upper class person who we can relate to

The article does claim that other (typically upper middle class) traders often looked down on him because of his accent and education, e.g. "Hayes was on better terms with his brokers than most. They had in Hayes a kindred spirit—a state school Londoner with a cockney accent" and "Hayes, he said, seemed very 'barrow boy'—London finance slang for a low-class poseur."

Come to think of it, it would be interesting to compare the class backgrounds of those successfully prosecuted and those who got away scot-free, just to see how those in the old boy network fared.

Just because we overcharge some doesn't mean we should expand that and overcharge even more. Overcharging, mandatory minimums, sentencing guidelines, etc. are the reason the US prison population dwarfs that of other nations. We need to focus on rehabilitation and prevention for crimes like the drug dealer you mentioned not expand our prison population further by excessively charging in more and more crimes.

Don't you think it would hurry that process along if the prisons filled up with bankers?

Penalties for crimes that affect such large groups or even populations should be very harsh. Penalties for public services (police/politician corruption or actions) should be super harsh.

Police, institutional execs (bankers/doctors) and politicians should have a penalty structure that incentivizes appropriate behavior.

Just as they impose such rules downstream they should be subject to very harsh penalties when they exploit their positions.

I think that's because they know the white collar criminal is going to have access to a good lawyer and they need a more solid case. If many of the charges end up being false, you are going to cast doubt on the whole case

Not to mention the government will waste millions of dollars and not get a conviction. I don't think the government could afford to prosecute every white collar crime because of the high cost of doing so.

I don't think it's a double standard. Most people would not be unhappy that he was punished to the full extent of the law (although generally I dislike "example" cases that are treated more harshly) if all of those involved were pursued, including those at more senior levels in the bank who were aware of and sanctioned the actions. You would not, by contrast, see prosecutors stop pursuing the top level drug dealers just because they got somebody to make an example of publicly.

In some ways, it feels like the punishment for the crime should be directly proportional to the level of responsibility the "criminal" had.

It seems like any bank boss who, where it can be proven, acknowledges and approves of his subordinate engaging in criminal activity should be sentenced to at least the same punishment as the trader himself.

My only real life experience with a "drug bust" was at a music festival where a cop came up to my friend and I, asked for our bag of weed, dumped it out, and then asked where we got it. We didn't tell him where we got it and I then thanked him for not issuing us a citation.

I'm white and my friend is Mexican.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com