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Comment by confounded | Hacker News Reader

I think you may have mistaken the justice system as fair or rational.

The justice system punishes people. There are around 2.2M people in US prisons.

Schmidt was involved in corruption --- for profit --- which duped ordinary people into releasing around 1MM tons of pollution in to the atmosphere in a single year; about the same as all the power generation for the 66 million people in the UK.

What's the scale of the damage that most of the other 2.2M people in prison did? Sold some drugs? Stole a crappy old car?

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> The justice system punishes people. There are around 2.2M people in US prisons.

The justice system punishes society by failing to adequately rehabilitate offenders. As a result many go on to reoffend. So really the current system is only punishing the next innocent victims of crimes perpetrated by released inmates.

See the difference in reoffending rates between Norway and the USA, and their different approaches to prison time. For a start, the US views the inmates as "criminals", Norway views the inmates as people who did something illegal.

>"US views the inmates as "criminals", Norway views the inmates as people who did something illegal."

Interesting point you are making here. In Norway's case it's "what someone did", and if he stops doing it, it's fine again whereas if you think/say "these people are criminals" it appears as if these people are inherently bad, which is a worse basis to help people improve.

You might be interested in "Breaking the Cycle" on Netflix. It shows the difference in approach between Norway and the US.

I don't disagree, but it seems to me like this has little relevance to this kind of white-collar crime. Business executives who broke the law don't need GEDs, college degrees, or vocational programs.

I don't disagree with you at all. In fact, I would hope that if one were to see locking this middle manager in prison as pointless, it could act as a mental stepping stone to reconsidering the purpose of the prison system in general.

Experience suggests the actual result will be a two-tiered justice system where rich criminals are far less likely to go to prison, even when committing serious crimes.

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