Madoff and Alan Stanford went to jail. although unrelated to the 2008 financial crisis, is evidence white collar criminals can in fact get very punitive sentences. In the case of the 2008 crisis, the link between the actions of any one individual and the crisis itself is more tenuous. The problem was no so much maleficence, but underestimating risk. The risk management models these banks were using could not have foreseen such a large and sudden catastrophic failure. You cannot put people in jail for failing to account for tail risk. Second, the crisis was possibly also caused by poor government policy, such as programs creating incentives for low-income homeowners who may have not have had good credit.