Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in prison

[Frax]

The good news is, he can knock 19.5 years off for good behavior!

[OneofOne]

I don't understand why they didn't take everything from him and leave his wife penniless on the street. She didn't know? What the fuck ever.

[PosterOfStuff]

People don't just get out of bed and decide one day I am going to rip off the system and become a billionare.

Its a series of small (criminal) steps at first and then growing into bigger riskier steps as time goes on.

Its those first steps people COULD take that a sentence like this should be acting as a deterence for.

When you talk about the death penalty or work gangs for prisioners and no rehab then you are moving from a justice system to a vengence system. But thats a whole other discussion.

I will point out that if you do make work groups out of prisioners then you are competing against priviate groups who build roads, buldings etc.

[Tangurena]

Originally Posted by tjac

No one lives even close to 150 years. There is no real deterrent in the length of the term. In Madoff's case, it's barely a punishment; he's 71 and life expectancy is 78.

I'm not sure how you effectively punish a Madoff and establish a deterrent...imprison his children for the balance of the sentence that he does not live to serve?

With the severity of the time, he's not going to club fed as other white collar criminals have done, he's going to medium security, which means that his life expectancy there is under 2 years in general population. He's going to be beaten (or stabbed) to death by some homie who needs to prove his manliness (or maybe to join a gang that requires blood-in).

There is no deterring sociopaths. They never believe that they are going to get caught. So even if he was fried in boiling oil on prime time TV, the next guy to do the same thing isn't going to think "wow that could be me." Justice isn't about "deterring" the next guy. It isn't about revenge. It is about punishing the one who did it. It is about society saying "this is the price for what you did."

[Voyce]

Originally Posted by Tangurena

With the severity of the time, he's not going to club fed as other white collar criminals have done, he's going to medium security, which means that his life expectancy there is under 2 years in general population. He's going to be beaten (or stabbed) to death by some homie who needs to prove his manliness (or maybe to join a gang that requires blood-in).

There is no deterring sociopaths. They never believe that they are going to get caught. So even if he was fried in boiling oil on prime time TV, the next guy to do the same thing isn't going to think "wow that could be me." Justice isn't about "deterring" the next guy. It isn't about revenge. It is about punishing the one who did it. It is about society saying "this is the price for what you did."

Who ever said Madoff was a sociopath? Did he kill anyone? Before you answer, yeah, to be a sociopath you pretty much had to have at least tried, or have been diagnosed as one prior to trying to kill someone. Otherwise Bill Gates is a sociopath, yeah, seriously he just stomped the shit out of all of his competition with hard line deals and reaped the profit so he could start the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a modern Robin Hood right? (Gates has Asperger's) So would be any teacher who likes to fail students.

Justice is definitely about deterrence and revenge, but it's more deterrence. If someone killed one of my loved one's I'd want to kill them myself, not have them be punished by a third party.

Does this deterrence always work, no, obviously it doesn't. Does it work a lot, fuck yes. If you don't believe our use of "deterrence" as a logical abstraction from nature, then you don't understand basic biology.

Here's a little test, go over to your stove/range and turn one of the burners on, wait for it to warm up and stick your hand on it... Now Try and make yourself do it again. Chances are you won't do it the first time.

Guess what?

That's a deterrent.

You know how easy most locks are to unlock? Do you know how easily you can get your hands on alphabet key sets for say Masterlock (I know someone who got an entire set off the interwebs)? Do you really think locks keep people out because they're impossible to break into?

Locks only keep "honest" people "honest". A lock is a reminder to any individual in society where their place is. If you don't believe that then go around craigslist and post your address, tell them that you leave your door unlocked. See how many, "sociopath's" come to your door.

The truth is it's never as black and white as what you want to make it out to be. Honesty is to some degree about altruism and to some degree it's about saving your neck.

If you can call sociopath on an individual whose willing to steal, based on the degree for which he's stolen, then you can call sociopath on anyone whose willing to make money based on the degree and means to which they've made it, without considering the ramifications. Capitalism is an abstract concept made by us, there's no hard line moral base that stems from our biology based on it. And in nature, THEFT happens all the time.

But how many of you are willing to call the Pioneers of Silicon Valley, sociopaths? How many are willing to call the Wall Street guru's sociopaths? I will grant you that most of these individuals, do have a different mind-set, many are narcissists, and egotists, and have some different wiring going on in their brain.

But if you want to call Madoff a sociopath, without taking them into account, then your doing it just to preserve your own mindset. And of course if you do call them all sociopaths, well then your probably a communist, or at least a socialist...maybe an anarchist.

In order to be a sociopath you'd have to be willing to kill to serve your benefit, and chances are if your 71 you've run into several encounters in your life where ending someone else's life would be beneficial to you in some way. Sure it doesn't say that in most text books, but yeah it's pretty much a universal truth.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Voyce

Who ever said Madoff was a sociopath? Did he kill anyone? Before you answer, yeah, to be a sociopath you pretty much had to have at least tried, or have been diagnosed as one prior to trying to kill someone. Otherwise Bill Gates is a sociopath, yeah, seriously he just stomped the shit out of all of his competition with hard line deals and reaped the profit so he could start the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a modern Robin Hood right? (Gates has Asperger's) So would be any teacher who likes to fail students.

Antisocial personality disorder does require you to have tried to kill someone. Quoting the APA Diagnostics and Statistics manual it is "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood." Deceit and manipulation are considered essential features of the disorder.

Originally Posted by Voyce

Justice is definitely about deterrence and revenge, but it's more deterrence. If someone killed one of my loved one's I'd want to kill them myself, not have them be punished by a third party.

Here's a little test, go over to your stove/range and turn one of the burners on, wait for it to warm up and stick your hand on it... Now Try and make yourself do it again. Chances are you won't do it the first time.

Guess what?

That's a deterrent.

That is not a deterrent. That is conditioning. Our criminal justice system is based on four things, incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Our preference for incapacitation is clear. We have the largest prison population in the world and imprison more people per capita than any other country as well. Revenge is not one of the cornerstones of criminal justice.

The primary problem with deterrence is that it assumes rationality. People don't really think things through and they overestimate their own abilities when they do. Almost everyone arrested is either drunk or high at the time and that puts a real damper on logical thought. Panic, passion, and necessity all do a good job of hindering the possible benefits of deterrence. Strong social and economic forces make a mockery out of deterrence as well. It is not an unimportant concept but it is not what the US is basing its laws on.

[Voyce]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Antisocial personality disorder does require you to have tried to kill someone. Quoting the APA Diagnostics and Statistics manual it is "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood." Deceit and manipulation are considered essential features of the disorder.

I'm going to assume you meant to say doesn't, like I said you're not going to find it defined as such in most dictionaries, interestingly there's a lot you won't find defined in dictionaries. All I can tell you is to ask psychologists that have worked in the field for a decade or so, especially with criminals (not just 20 year old pysch majors).

That is not a deterrent. That is conditioning.

Seriously, are you trying to argue semantics here? I don't have a rebuttal for this because you don't have an argument.

Revenge is not one of the cornerstones of criminal justice.

Revenge is a part of justice, period.

If you don't believe that then your denying some of your basest humanity. Certainly "criminal justice" is not a person, it's a collection of ideologies but those ideologies are all based on people. And people--and if you deny this you might as well not argue with me because I won't value any more of your arguments--are vengeful.

The primary problem with deterrence is that it assumes rationality. People don't really think things through and they overestimate their own abilities when they do. Almost everyone arrested is either drunk or high at the time and that puts a real damper on logical thought. Panic, passion, and necessity all do a good job of hindering the possible benefits of deterrence. Strong social and economic forces make a mockery out of deterrence as well. It is not an unimportant concept but it is not what the US is basing its laws on.

Just because people don't always act rationally doesn't mean they can't, and therefore is not argument against using deterrents. If your implying that the only way for deterrents to work is for people to be "conditioned" than your argument is kind of dumb.

How many of you actually had to stick your hand over a burner when you were a kid, resulting in a serious burn, in order for you to learn "stove hot, no touch stove!"? I know I didn't.

Pain is the deterrent, we can rationalize why we don't want to feel pain, just like we can rationalize that we don't want to go to jail and take in the ass from big Bubba, just like we can rationalize if we're angry drunks, maybe we shouldn't drink so much.

Sure an alcoholic who goes to jail might not be deterred from drinking ever again when he comes out. It could put him on the right path to sobriety or it might influence him to drink more. Likewise I'm not saying deterrents work for everything, of course they don't, but they definitely work for many.

[Arbitrary]

Revenge is something you as an individual engage in. It is not something that the state engages in. Our criminal justice is not based on revenge. I'm honest to god just repeating shit from Introduction to Criminal Justice 101. And I don't need to ask a psychologist with twenty years in the field about sociopaths because I know one who teaches as an adjunct and who has had more than a few lectures regarding sociopaths.

In regards to deterrence. It is not a semantic argument when you are just using the wrong term. Deterrence is not about the individual that you are punishing and their learning not to do it again. That is much closer to rehabilitation. Deterrence is about other people who see that punishment and decide to not engage in similar behavior. You are "sending a message to criminals" and are demonstrating you are "tough on crime" and all that political blather. It is nothing like learning to not put your hand on the stove.