Society - Criminal Punishment Punishing

Society - Criminal Punishment

PUNISHING WHITE COLLAR CRIME APPROPRIATELY

In his 2005 New York Times article, "How Long to Jail White-Collar Criminals?," Andrew Sorkin expresses a reluctance to punish white collar criminals as harshly as current laws allow. Sorkin cites several arguments, including the suggestion that the advanced age of defendants makes long sentences tantamount to a life sentence and that they are out of proportion to the seriousness of other crimes eligible for similar sentences. According to one of Sorkin's sources, long sentences in high-profile cases provide less deterrent value than increased enforcement efforts producing greater numbers of convictions but shorter sentences. Sorkin utterly fails to consider the impact of white collar crimes on those victimized by them and does not address that issue in his analysis at all; he merely acknowledges that the argument against harsh penalties does not go so far as to suggest that white collar crimes should go unpunished.

Robert Vigil's account of the direct consequences of white collar crimes of the type at issue details the tremendous harm to innocent individuals and their families and serves as an effective reminder of the basis for penal law in the first place. While it may be appropriate to punish white collar crimes that do not cause substantial tangible harm to innocents less harshly than some violent crimes, that argument simply does not hold water in cases where those crimes do cause tremendous harms, such as those detailed by Vigil. Furthermore, the position that the advanced age of white collar criminals should justify to mitigate their criminal sentences completely ignores the effect their crimes have on the quality of the twilight years of their equally elderly victims. At the very least, white collar crime must be punished in a manner that reflects the magnitude and types of harms they cause to innocent individuals.