Hear Ye, Hear Ye
from January/February 2008
by Rob Norton
Six ways to return rationality to white-collar criminal sentencing—and one way to get more rational about our huge prison population:
• Prosecute more white-collar wrongdoers in civil rather than criminal courts.
• Rein in prosecutors by stopping them from bringing multiple counts of mail fraud and wire fraud as a way to extend prison time for bigger crimes.
• Forbid the use of special-purpose laws like the racketeering and money-laundering statutes as add-ons in common fraud cases.
• Rewrite the sentencing guidelines so that they don’t impose lengthy sentences based on questionable, mechanistic formulas.
• Change the guidelines so that they allow judges more leeway in tailoring sentences to specific cases.
• Restore parole for federal sentences.
And while we’re at it, rethink the fundamental approach to criminal punishment as a whole. It has produced a U.S. prison population of more than two million—a far higher proportion than in any other advanced industrialized country.
