Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

While Rapists get 5 years.

So much for justice.

To be perfectly frank, that's not ssaying that Madoff doesn't deserve his sentence, it's just showing that the American system doesn't look on rape as being as big a crime as say, money laundering.

It's a ludicrous sentence, pretty much guaranteed to be for show only.

After all, the average life span these days in the developed world is what, 85 or so? Madoff is 71 already.

So why 150 years? Might as well have been a gajillion bazillion years really.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:It's a ludicrous sentence, pretty much guaranteed to be for show only.

After all, the average life span these days in the developed world is what, 85 or so? Madoff is 71 already.

So why 150 years? Might as well have been a gajillion bazillion years really.

It's for parole purposes. You have to serve a certain portion of your sentence before parole is possible, so they're basically just putting him in jail for the rest of his life.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:It's a ludicrous sentence, pretty much guaranteed to be for show only.

After all, the average life span these days in the developed world is what, 85 or so? Madoff is 71 already.

So why 150 years? Might as well have been a gajillion bazillion years really.

Each crime that he was charged with has a certain penalty. He's sentenced to those penalties. Has nothing to do with the ability to actually carry out the sentence.

Ketara wrote:To be perfectly frank, that's not ssaying that Madoff doesn't deserve his sentence, it's just showing that the American system doesn't look on rape as being as big a crime as say, money laundering.

Except that historically that hasn't been the case. White collar crime has received markedly less time than blue collar crime. This is a reversal of the norm, and shows that maybe the courts are beginning to recognise that some white collar crime can reach a scale where millions of people are harmed, and the punishment should be equivalent?

Or maybe it was just the high profile case in the middle of bad economic times...

sebster wrote:
Or maybe it was just the high profile case in the middle of bad economic times...

Winner Winner. For those of who aren't familiar with how much was stolen (because that's what money laundering is), it was right around $17 billion. There were a lot of not-for-profit organizations that lost loads of money along with regular investors. I think that the NPO aspect really pissed a lot of people off.

Comparing the sentence for ONE rape charge isn't quite fair.
Madoff was charged with HOW MANY counts?

Give a rapist a sentence for that many counts of rape, THEN see who has a longer sentence.

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:Comparing the sentence for ONE rape charge isn't quite fair.
Madoff was charged with HOW MANY counts?

Give a rapist a sentence for that many counts of rape, THEN see who has a longer sentence.

Eric

The rapist still gets less

Gwar! wrote:The rapist still gets less

Doubt that. Multiple counts of rape has a person looking at the death penalty is some states. There tends to be some vigilante justice towards rape offenders as well.

youngblood wrote:
Doubt that. Multiple counts of rape has a person looking at the death penalty is some states. There tends to be some vigilante justice towards rape offenders as well.

Don't forget the ancillary charges which commonly accompany rape: assault, battery, attempted murder, and all that jazz.

Also, the statistical reports which state offenders only serve 5 years in prison for rape tend to be based on unweighted averages. Basically, someone might serve 20 years in prison for a blanket charge of assault, battery, rape, and trespassing so the statistician simply divides the total by 4 in order to determine the number of years 'served for rape'. The flaws in that thinking are obvious.

dogma wrote: The flaws in that thinking are obvious.

<insert comment about religion here>

Gwar! wrote:

dogma wrote: The flaws in that thinking are obvious.

<insert comment about religion here>

Haha.... Gwar! you kill me. Once a person gets over taking the things you say seriously or personally, you are probably the funniest person on this board.

youngblood wrote:

Gwar! wrote:

dogma wrote: The flaws in that thinking are obvious.

<insert comment about religion here>

Haha.... Gwar! you kill me. Once a person gets over taking the things you say seriously or personally, you are probably the funniest person on this board.

<insert comment about Japanese Panties here>

You can't compare a single case fo rape to Madoff. What Madoff did was basically financial rape to thousands of people. Most offenders get very very long sentences after getting convicted of multiple rape counts. Also consider that crime stats don't always tell the whole story - statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

NPR's Money Blog figured out that he got 1 year of jail for every $1.2 million dollars of fraud (assuming that the losses were $65 billion as opposed to $17 billion).

dietrich wrote:You can't compare a single case fo rape to Madoff. What Madoff did was basically financial rape to thousands of people. Most offenders get very very long sentences after getting convicted of multiple rape counts. Also consider that crime stats don't always tell the whole story - statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

Its a really grey crime to begin with. Not to say that rape doesn't happen, and that it isn't terrible. It certainly does, and is. But there are many issues with consent, and falsification. Duke lacrosse is the poster child for that fact.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gwar! wrote:

dogma wrote: The flaws in that thinking are obvious.

<insert comment about Gwar! here>

Fixed.

Gwar! wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Comparing the sentence for ONE rape charge isn't quite fair.
Madoff was charged with HOW MANY counts?

Give a rapist a sentence for that many counts of rape, THEN see who has a longer sentence.

Eric

The rapist still gets less

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 charges.

I did a little research:

Prison sentences for rape are not uniform. A study made by the U.S. Department of Justice of prison releases in 1992, involving about 80 percent of the prison population, found that the average sentence for convicted rapists was 11.8 years, while the actual time served was 5.4 years.

Unfortunately, my Google-fu was weak & 1992 was the most recent I found. I can only guess it would have gone up since then.
Regardless, this means (11 x 11.8) a rapist would have received 129.8 years, on average, for 11 counts. Add in, as has been stated, ancillary charges and 150 years would be a vacation in comparison.

Eric

dogma wrote:

dietrich wrote:You can't compare a single case fo rape to Madoff. What Madoff did was basically financial rape to thousands of people. Most offenders get very very long sentences after getting convicted of multiple rape counts. Also consider that crime stats don't always tell the whole story - statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

Its a really grey crime to begin with. Not to say that rape doesn't happen, and that it isn't terrible. It certainly does, and is. But there are many issues with consent, and falsification. Duke lacrosse is the poster child for that fact.

I wouldn't say it's a grey crime, it's pretty black and white to me - it's wrong. But, I'll agree that it can sometimes be a difficult crime to prove. There's various degrees of assault: 'drunk frat boy and drunk girl' to 'break into the house and torture someone'.

Madoff absolutely deserves the sentence. Some kid with a knife robs a guy's wallet and gets 10 years. This guy destroyed the financial security of thousands. SO what if it was "non-violent" and the perp is white collar.

The crime was terrible.

And **** rapists. They should be getting 20-life as well.

Rape and Murder are terrible crimes, both of which I wish there were harsher penalties, but ol' Bernie deserves every second of that sentence. That man ruined the lives of thousands. Not just the rich people reinvesting money they inherited from Momsy and Dadums. Investment firms charged with the growth and care of the every day guy's retirement plan trusted him. Charity organizations who use their funds to help the downtrodden looked to him to steward their causes. People that have worked all of their lives, and thought they were investing wisely to one day live out their golden years in some degree of comfort, not ending up a burden to their families when the medical bills and assisted living darkens their doorsteps. I can only hope his cohorts are outted and they join him in prison until the flames come calling.

Please enlighten me as to who this Madoff bloke is.

I don't watch the news much TBH.

He's a man who was thought by investors and economists world wide to be a sophisticated Hedge Fund manager who's genius was able to give double digit returns to those that trusted him with their money. It turns out he was playing them all for fools. He swindled 50 Billion dollars (and that does not take into account the multiple feeder funds) with a Ponzi Scheme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme leaving thousands absolutely ruined.

dietrich wrote:...statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

Really? They would've forgotten about me by now though right?

Remember that prison sentences are consecutive in the US so they're slightly deceptive to the UK reader.

7 years in the Statute of Limitations over here, George. You'd be free and clear by this point, correct.

dietrich wrote:You can't compare a single case fo rape to Madoff. What Madoff did was basically financial rape to thousands of people. Most offenders get very very long sentences after getting convicted of multiple rape counts. Also consider that crime stats don't always tell the whole story - statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

I think you hit the nail right on the head. This is the life savings of people who need this money for retirement. This is the money that people have saved over their entire working lives that they'll need to pay for such needs as medical care, elder care, burial expenses, and certainly not least, things they have always wanted to do but couldn't while they were working, like travel, etc. This man's fraud could litterally take years off of his investor's lives through diminished quality of life during their retirement years. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of those investors are probably nearing their retirement, and they don't have the years that many of us on this board have to make up for it. You could even reason that this will effect the inheritance of people down the line, thefore his crime will effect multiple generations. And if you don't feel sorry for "trust fund babies" as one poster here apparently feels, then you need to remember that those people inheriting that money would have gone on to pay taxes and reinvest that money in business, etc, that benefit the community, not just them ( Doesn't matter to me, the fact is, it is their money, whether they inherited it or "earned" it, and they thought they were investing wisely).

The bottom line is I think a strong case can be made that this crime is as bad as murder or rape. In fact I have read there have been a couple suicides associated with this.

Much worse. The lives of thousands of people have been ruined. Do the English method of punishment for pirates mayhaps. Hang him and hang his body in a cage on a light pole on Wall Street as a warning to other pirates?

if i was the judge in that case i would have let him go.
but heres the catch he has to walk home alone with no bodygaurds. if he makes it he gets of scotch free..
Also his wife gets to keep the money(as far as i now) because of the "no corruption of blood" in the american constitution.

Grignard wrote:

dietrich wrote:You can't compare a single case fo rape to Madoff. What Madoff did was basically financial rape to thousands of people. Most offenders get very very long sentences after getting convicted of multiple rape counts. Also consider that crime stats don't always tell the whole story - statutory rape can be a 17yr old girl and her 19yr old boyfriend.

I think you hit the nail right on the head. This is the life savings of people who need this money for retirement. This is the money that people have saved over their entire working lives that they'll need to pay for such needs as medical care, elder care, burial expenses, and certainly not least, things they have always wanted to do but couldn't while they were working, like travel, etc. This man's fraud could litterally take years off of his investor's lives through diminished quality of life during their retirement years. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of those investors are probably nearing their retirement, and they don't have the years that many of us on this board have to make up for it. You could even reason that this will effect the inheritance of people down the line, thefore his crime will effect multiple generations. And if you don't feel sorry for "trust fund babies" as one poster here apparently feels, then you need to remember that those people inheriting that money would have gone on to pay taxes and reinvest that money in business, etc, that benefit the community, not just them ( Doesn't matter to me, the fact is, it is their money, whether they inherited it or "earned" it, and they thought they were investing wisely).

The bottom line is I think a strong case can be made that this crime is as bad as murder or rape. In fact I have read there have been a couple suicides associated with this.

Meh... they took a gamble with investments and failed. Now they can know the joy of working untill they die. Who knows... since they now have to contenue to work they might not live as long. Besides... Maddoff needed all those billions... he was doing his job and should be rewarded for it with as much as he can get. All the people who lost their money need to just suck it up, stop whining and pull themselves up by the bootstraps. They aren't looking at it in the right economic light... they didnt lose money, they made someone else REALLY REALLY RICH!!!

Fallen668 wrote:Meh... they took a gamble with investments and failed.

People will put money into a start up and seeing that start up fail to make signifiits product to market and losing your money. This is a shame but it was risk they took and the product didn't work out, no-one has to go to jail.

That is very different to someone who is taking your money on the promise of investing it wisely, then using it to pay older investors. This is not taking a gamble and failing. This is being defrauded.