The high-profile, 24-year prison sentence awarded to former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling aside, most white-collar criminals convicted during President Bush's crackdown on white-collar crime aren't serving much prison time at all.61% of those sentenced spent no more than two years in jail, with 28% receiving no prison time at all, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
After the collapse of Enron, President Bush established a corporate fraud task force to bring justice to unscrupulous executives, but a lot of people wonder whether so little prison time is really justice. In a speech in September 2002, Mr. Bush said, "This broad effort is sending a clear warning and a clear message to every dishonest corporate leader: You will be exposed and you will be punished. We will deter corporate crimes by enforcing tough penalties.''
It just doesn't make any sense at all. White-collar criminals, in addition to the money they have stolen from investors or their employers and customers, threaten America's faith in our financial markets. The actions of a relatively small number of unethical executives have made a necessity of laws like Sarbanes-Oxley, a huge and probably unnecessary expense for the majority of companies that behave ethically.
Here's an idea: Instead of just imposing expensive and time-consuming regulation on the good guys of corporate America to try to deter the bad guys, why don't we try punishing the guilty?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-17-2007 @ 6:11PM
Jeff said...
Dishonesty never killed anyone, only gays and stem cell research can do that.
12-17-2007 @ 7:03PM
Athelstan said...
When justice is mocked by reducing 25 year jail sentences for the rich and the powerful to 2 year sentences, another nail is being driven into America's coffin. We are simply one step further toward the dissolution of our society, the creation of chaos, and laying the foundation for civil war.