Because prison is barbaric, and expensive and should be saved for hardened criminals. Nothing personal, but it's people like you who think throwing people in prison some kind of societal solution that we have overflowing prisons of petty criminals.
I'm not a fan of barbarism or prison in general, but actually I think that using your position at the apex of one of the world's leading banks to squeeze money out of people at the bottom of the pyramid* qualifies as criminality.
* Whether you consider the consumers or the low-level tellers who set up millions of shadow accounts to meet otherwise impossible performance goals to be the bottom layer, I think the point stands either way.
I'm perplexed by your use of the word 'hardened.' Perhaps you meant 'violent' but there are plenty of people in prison who had a clean record until they committed a violent crime of passion or suchlike, and likewise there are plenty of criminals whose criminality is unquestioned but who never engaged in any violent activity. Again you probably didn't intend this, but I can't help feeling that you're unconsciously making a class distinction between stereotypical blue collar heavies who help themselves or carry out break-ins, vs the sort of nice socially acceptable behavior of sitting at a desk signing corporate documents which will affect thousands or millions of people that the executive has never met and knows nothing about.
Look, I'm sure you just had some generic 'tough guy' in mind, but it's not like I'm demanding the guy get thrown into some hellhole and raped int he shower every day. I'd like if we could have humane prisons like some countries, far fewer people in them, and that they should form a representative cross-section of society.
Really, if you don't have some sort of institutional accountability then it just increases the incentives to do this sort of thing precisely because the upside benefits are so much larger than the downside risks. OK, Stumpf's professional reputation is in tatters and it's probably had a negative impact on his social life...but he can basically afford to spend the rest of his life on a yacht. People suffer worse consequences from divorce.
Except that's not how prison exists today. You steal a TV you go to prison. You steal a car you go to prison. You defraud society to the tune of 500 million you pay a fine and you keep your life of luxury? The double standard is unjustifiable.
I think you're implying that those punishments are wrong. What would be justice in your eyes for the three crimes described? To mine, the proportionality seems more than a little out of whack.
Mostly I'm implying that your argument doesn't hold weight. You don't throw someone in prison because if you don't there's a double standard with some other offence. You throw them in there because the crime they committed warranted it.
I'll play anyway for funzies though. First offence?
All 3 should be a non-bankruptable fine with a floor that also scales with historical earnings and wealth. I can't give specific numbers because I think it should be set at figures large enough to act as a suitable deterrent which I don't know and would need to research. Since in a scenario where I'm magically put in charge of the legal system I would have the means and incentive to do that research, I think that's fair on my part. Potentially some public shaming involving stocks and vegetable throwing depending on its cost effectiveness as a deterrent as well.
I imagine the fine amount would be far greater for the fraud though, which would help with the lack of proportionality.
I'm curious, so what do you do if the fine is never paid?
ETA: IS a non-bankruptable fne proportional if the fraud actually bankrupted many others? What if the consequence of the fraud on said victims then led them to further crimes which led them to a ruined life of pverty and squalor? Is a non-bankruptable fine still proportionate? What if it led to suicide, or armed robbery, or even murder...
Thank you for a much more thoughtful comment. I think you make a lot of good points. Do you think that the fines should be proportionate with respect to the status of the person convicted?
I think one issue is the perception that some very rich people can afford to pay those large fines, which acts as less of a deterrent.
The systemic damages done by someone at that level outweighs anything a hardened criminal done. Yes, $500MM in fraud caused magnitudes more misery and suffering to society, as a whole, than one murder. That kind of widespread damage has an untold number of ripple effects, pushing some people at the margins over the edge, breaking up marriages, causing people to drink and/or take narcotics, etc. It's hard to see, but it's like an armed robbery multiplied by 50 million.
In this instance, prison would actually serve as a deterrence.
Because prison is barbaric, and expensive and should be saved for hardened criminals. Nothing personal, but it's people like you who think throwing people in prison some kind of societal solution that we have overflowing prisons of petty criminals.