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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

This is the main difference between US justice and the rest of the western world. We are a society that is pathologically individualistic, believing in personal agency and responsibility above all else. So it's about punishing the individual, with protecting society being secondary to that. Rehabilitation can be tried for lesser crimes if it doesn't interfere with said punishment. But capital crimes are capital crimes and we do not believe in second chances for those.

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It's all about personal responsibility unless you're an officer of a corporation -- then it's all about limiting responsibility and shielding people from the consequences of their choices.

Yes, BUT... that's also sort of twisted.

If we punished individuals in corporations more for corporate malfeasance, the corporation (as a whole) would likely get away with it.

Also, that's not to get into the entire "corporate hierarchy makes sure only the bottom rung person is guilty of doing the thing they ordered done."

In fact, there's 3 consequences that need parallel address in corporate cases:

   - Corporate (including death)
   - Management (incl. informed)
   - IC

The major gaps in our current corporate justice system seem to be (1) tail risk penalties to corporations aren't frequent of severe enough (i.e. fine on % of worldwide revenue, until redressed; corporate dissolution), (2) informed management aren't held responsible (RICO standards would be better here -- if you could have done something, and you had an association, you're at fault).

If a corporation commits 1,000,000 crimes, each of which would carry 3 years of prison time, then there should be 3 million years of prison time distributed among the guilty.

If you own 1/1,000,000 of that corporation, then you should the 1/1,000,000 of that prison time, or 3 years.

This is so simple that it should take one explanation in 5th grade for everyone in our society to understand it.

If stockholders were going to prison, I guarantee corporate ethics and HR would get a make-over.

This all seems like a moot point or at least unrelated to "individualism": Prevailing popular wisdom says that East Asian societies are "collectivist" but their prisons are not nicer to be in as a result, and there is still plenty of capital punishment to go around

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