While there should be more incentives to cooperate, like the type of prison, allowed visits, etc. claiming someone should serve less time because they described so much of their own crimes is kind of silly
As for Diddy: a real, disinterested DOJ would say, "oh, you can testify against <people more famous than you>? Well, we might be able to cut you a deal."
Of course, if the DOJ is not interested in prosecuting those people, then no deal. If they think Diddy is already important enough and they can't let him slide, then no deal, or at least, a medium-stiff sentence.
Finally, two years in prison is not a picnic. See if you want to do it.
It was her lawyers that asked for no jail time. Not the prosecutors.
It seems to me, as prosecutors and Probation Dept talk to each other, that all, except Kaplan, agreed on no prison time for Ellison.
Also, in addition to jail time, she's going to owe a huge sum of money. The feds are going to have a claim on any money she makes for the rest of her life.
For better or worse (I think a little of both), long max sentences exist in the US criminal justice system to allow rewarding cooperators and to threaten non-cooperators alike.
It could have been disingenuous. Maybe they knew the judge wouldn't go for it.
As for her not cooperating: would you rather SBF skate free?
I don't know what the case against SBF would have looked like without her, and I suspect you don't, either.
Thus I asked why two years and not five or ten of whatever time under the expected sentence time in case of no cooperation.
"Is integrity of the prosecutor a valid answer?"
Yes it is.
Seriously. I'm shocked how cavalier people are about the lengths of prison sentences. Two years in prison is a LOOONNNNGG time.
I was once detained for an hour in a small room at a border. Being deprived of my freedom, my phone, and any comfort, was fairly devastating.
For what she was charged with, two years is probably the bare minimum that was available at sentencing given the constraint of "must serve jail time".
Meanwhile in Germany, the sentence range for human trafficking is 6 months to a max of 5 years. Stealing a child is also max 5 years (if you're not intending to sell it).
The contrast is pretty stark.
Germany has taken the other approach and implemented policies to make their country closer to a prison with all kind of harsher regulations, then reducing prison time.
There are merits to be found in either approach.
Why would harsher penalties be required in a place where individuals have more capability to do harm? That seems to place a lot of faith in a linear efficacy of deterrence
She also described somebody else's crimes, and did that in a way which helped the government with sentencing the "real villain."
The world gets zero benefit to imprisoning this woman indefinitely, it in fact costs money, and if the government had to prove their case against her without her cooperation, it would just cost even more money. Not letting a fully-cooperating sucker like her off is the opposite of a deterrent to crime. It's telling low-level people who are involved in crimes that it's better to keep quiet. We want to encourage them to betray. I hope when she gets out she becomes a celebrity, and it encourages other young people to decide to whistleblow or turn snitch on the scammy companies they work for.
What sorts of people does the world benefit from imprisoning indefinitely, and where on the spectrum does, say, being a serial and unrepentant shoplifter, stealing mid-four figures sums compare to being a financial criminal stealing mid-eight-figure sums?
She wasn't a 'low level whistleblower', she was one step below the ringleader, and only came clean after the whole thing went tits up and she was staring down two decades in federal.
If you're looking for heroes and whistleblowers, I don't think there were any in that whole organization. Just rats turning on eachother once the trap snapped shut around them.
Do you honestly think this is how the legal system works?
(I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, just saying this is the internally consistent approach.)