⇥ A Black day
Poor Lord Black! He spent some of his company’s money and, next thing he knows, he’s being convicted of fraud.
As convictions go, everybody seems to be convinced that he got off easy—”just” 72 months in prison and a repayment of around $6M. Personally, I doubt that anyone who learns he has to spend six years in jail would think of having gotten off easy, but journalists obviously have never gotten over him giving them the finger.
What a waste! A person like Conrad Black doesn’t belong in jail—he’s obviously not violent (I would have punched those idiots and their cameras, not just flipped them), and he’s a very capable man. The thought of him folding laundry and cooking lunch (and making sure he doesn’t drop his soap) while taxpayers, well, taxpay for keeping him behind bars.
That’s not justice—it’s stupidity. If you want to punish a person like Conrad Black for what he’s done, there’s no need to humiliate him by throwing him in jail. Justice can better be served by asking Conrad Black to actually repay his debt to society. Instead of locking him up, force him to work his debt off with punitive community service: make him live on the means of a salaried employees—no Bentleys, mansions, private jets… just a monthly salary, like one of the lowly people who used to work for him.
In the meantime, society could take advantage of Lord Black’s obvious talents to do some good—for example, get him to generate at least $60M in revenue for a charity, and limit where the money can come from and in what quantity to prevent his friends and family from simply bailing him out.
That, to me, sounds like a smarter way of punishing a man who is used to walking all over those around him. Since it would keep him out of jail and give himself a chance to make himself respectable again, he’d probably jump at the opportunity and save more taxpayer money by not dragging his trial case on for another five years. In the process, he might actually learn some humility, instead of humiliation, and actually be useful to society, instead of costing it money.
And, if you’re worried about him cheating his way around his community service limitations, have the court impose supervision in a way that becomes more complicated and expensive the less transparent he makes his dealings—and make him pay for it out of his court-imposed earnings.
Comments
Just because he is smart and a good businessman means he should not go to jail?
A good businessman would’ve played within the lines and won — he strayed and he deserves jail time just like your average drug dealer.
So your concept of justice is basically revenge? That’s completely useless. Get him to do *real* work for someone else—that will teach him a big lesson and benefit the community. Prison will accomplish nothing more than waste of talent and good money, and the community will not come ahead richer for it.
Marco,
Interesting post… very controversial topic.. so .. when you say.
“And, if you’re worried about him cheating his way around his community service limitations, have the court impose supervision in a way that becomes more complicated and expensive the less transparent he makes his dealings—and make him pay for it out of his court-imposed earnings.”
Who would pay for the supervisor? The rules and regulations? He himself would? What happens if decides to just do a shitty job? How long does he have to be in this punitive position where all his income goes to paying people back?
What if his ideas don’t sell? What if he dies on the way to court imposed work? Then how does anyone get justice?
If he doesn’t die.. how long does he have to generate the 60 million? The rest of his life? What motivation does he have to generate the 60 million?
And what about the hundreds of thousands of other convicted criminals?
You can’t make one rule for one man.
@vid: he pays for it from his own earnings—so he has the choice of either making things and transparent, thus spending less in supervision and getting out of this predicament sooner. If he dies while getting this work done… how is that different from him dying in prison? By the same token, the incentive to get things done is that he is being forced to live a life that’s far beneath what he’s accustomed to.
@richard: I’m not advocating that we make an exception for Black—if we could get the non-violent offenders out of jail and actually make them productive members of society, wouldn’t that be a better way to dish out punishment?
marco,
Making someone live a life that he’s not accustomed to is punishment, it’s a slap on the wrist. Even if he has to pay the 6 million or whatever at a much lower salary, there is nothing in it that really forces him to repent.
What if the economy is slow? It’s not his fault that he can’t make the money back as quickly, all his ideas are failing.. blah blah blah.. in the end he’s gonna go.. you know what? I can just continue to go to work, come home, sit in house arrest watch tv, and still interact with people who consider me friends..
That sounds a lot like a minimum security prison, except you have a little more freedoms.
I like your idea, but I think the idea should be on top of being stuck in a “f*ck me in the ass” prison.
Then use prison as a back-up incentive. Either get things done in good faith or end up in the slammer. Either way, at least give the man (or any person) a chance to actually redeem himself—to me, it just seems like common sense. As I said, the goal should be to teach humility, not to humiliate.
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