Nice to visit

Happy July, everyone. Thanks to Bernie Madoff, it's been an interesting week for those of us who think about white-collar crime. I can't possibly add to Jayne Barnard's play-by-play account of Bernard Madoff's sentencing proceeding, but I do have my own thoughts about the supposed deterrent value of his150 year term of imprisonment. Madoff's attorney, Ike Sorkin, had previously argued for a sentence of 12 years' imprisonment, which Sorkin contended constituted Madoff's life expectancy (Madoff is 71 years old) minus one year. (Sorkin was using data drawn from the Social Security Administration). Even assuming Sorkin's prediction of how long Madoff would live is correct, the problem with life expectancy sentences is that they lack expressive value. We tend to use prison sentences as a shorthand for moral culpability and... [read full story]                    

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