White-Collar Crime: Why Executives Don’t Go to Prison | Hacker News Reader

White-Collar Crime: Why Executives Don’t Go to Prison

fortune.com

35 pointsrbanffy5 comments

1. White collar cases often turn on technical details neither the judge nor the jury really understand. Even if the law's on your side it's a crapshoot.

2. Defendants have enough money the prosecutors can't just scare them into taking a plea bargain. 98% of federal cases are pled out (which is a good indication of tyranny). Prosecutors don't have the resources to take every case to trial, especially complex cases. It's easy to get people to understand drug distribution and bank robbery without calling dozens of expert witnesses. Financial flimflam? Not so much.

3. The public cares a lot more about keeping violent criminals behind bars than fraudsters.

Also, this bugs me:

>It’s been nearly a decade since the financial crisis, and yet no big-company executives are behind bars. One reason, says Eisinger, is that court rulings have taken away tactics that prosecutors had used to pressure defendants, such as restricting attorney-client privilege and preventing their companies from bankrolling sky-high legal bills.

Prosecutors should not have "tactics to pressure defendants". If you can't get a conviction without taking the defendant's money so he can't afford a lawyer, maybe you don't have a case.

Agreed. Some of the worst white collar criminals are actually DAs who knowingly prosecute people who shouldn't be prosecuted. They have the power to punish anyone even the innocent with potential prison time even if innocent, and also insane legal fees. If the government loses, they should pay for putting an innocent through so much hardship

once you realize that prison mainly just serves to disenfranchise the poor and minorities, the fact executives don't go to prison is obvious.

people will disagree, but you need only look at the facts to see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement

Exactly. Highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, save Seychelles. Slavery 2.0 meets prison-industrial complex and voter disenfranchisement. The US justice system is the opposite of reform-based systems like those in many Scandinavian countries. It's mean, expensive and reinforces a type of social apartheid.

The Census counts prisoners according to the "usual residence rule," assigning them to their prison for purpose of location and, of course, redistricting. A prison is a good way to get a lot of bodies to populate a district and ensure they won't vote.

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