White-Collar Time for White-Collar Crime

As someone who spent nearly a decade as an FBI agent investigating fraud, I could hardly be described as being soft on crime. In a civilized society, criminals must be punished for their transgressions. But if the punishment doesn't fit the crime, it's self-defeating and even barbaric. That's the situation in which we now find ourselves with regard to high-profile white-collar criminals.

American prosecutors and politicians who seek to be perceived as tough on crime insist that we must send the public a message by imposing stiff sentences. The notion is that if we see others punished, we're less likely to commit crime ourselves. This is what criminologists call "general deterrence." Will Hoover of Cherry Creek, Colo., received a 100-year prison term for a Ponzi scheme in which investors lost $13 million. Jeffrey Skilling of Enron got 24 years. Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom was sentenced to 25 years, and John Rigas of Adelphia, 15 years.

The theory of general deterrence has been around for ages but what we learned in the 20th century from various scientific studies is that it just doesn't work well, if at all. The average sentence for fraud is 16 months in the United Kingdom and 23 months in Australia. Indeed, the rate of incarceration in the United States is four times that of the world average yet our crime rates are among the highest when compared to other countries.