The NIMBYs of the criminal justice system

Why the United States has such a punitive system

Photo by Emiliano Bar on Unsplash

Several weeks ago, Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing billions of dollars from his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The story itself is fascinating. How a twenty-something could amass a digital empire, then have it all come crashing down in such terrific fashion, is a fraud for the ages. One of my favorite explanations of how the fraud worked can be found at Josh Barro’s Substack.

What struck me about the 25-year sentence was the mixed results from people across the internet. A lot of the consensus was that this was a light and unfair sentence. Just read some of the comments on Reddit or the New York Times. Many people are saying something to the effect of, “The prosecutors asked for 40 to 50 years and he was eligible for 110! Looks like another rich, white-collar criminal gets off easy.”

This reaction strikes me as both impulsive and slightly hypocritical. Impulsive because 25 years is a really long time! Remember, SBF is a first-time offender convicted of a non-violent crime. To be fair, that non-violent crime was to the tune of billions of dollars. Still, my prior is that a first-time offender who hasn’t physically hurt anybody shouldn’t be sent away for the rest of his life. That seems like such a fair statement to me it’s hard to find anyone that would argue the larger point. Are there people who think first-time, non-violent offenders should be sent to prison for life?

This was a federal case, which traditionally means a convicted individual has to serve 85 percent of their sentence. That would put SBF in prison for over 21 years. Some are upset that under the recently signed First Step Act, he may qualify for a significant sentence reduction whereby he may only serve around 14 years. In either case, this is a long time. Imagine all the things you hope to accomplish over the next 14 years, or all the things you have accomplished over the last 14. Now take them all away. Reduce them to nothing. That’s the reality Sam Bankman-Fried is about to experience. A good portion of his adult life is going to be spent treading water.

It also comes across as slightly hypocritical because many of the complaints are coming from those who want a more lenient criminal justice system. The First Step Act, when signed into law by Donald Trump, was met with near universal praise by the left. It provides an avenue for redemption for thousands of non-violent offenders in the federal criminal justice system. As progressives has argued for years that our current system doles out sentences that are too long, a sentiment I firmly agree with, the First Step Act was a great idea. Yet here it is being applied to the exact type of convicted felon that it was designed to help, and those who cheered the law are now upset it applied to someone they don’t like.

This brings me to my main point: there has been a NIMBYfication of the criminal justice system in the United States.

NIMBY, which stands for Not In My Back Yard, usually refers to development. Everyone says they want more housing built, but try to build more housing, and locals object. There are communities across America full of people arguing homelessness is the result of capitalism, but then prevent housing from being built through the forces of government. This is nonsense. If you want fewer homeless people, you need to provide more housing! And that housing has to be real, brick-and-mortar buildings, not just a sentiment. It has to go in someone’s backyard.

The same attitudes exist about the criminal justice system. Many, many people say they want a less punitive system. One that hands down shorter sentences and gives people a second chance at life. But not all criminals. Not for the criminals whose victim’s families’ lives, now ripped apart, are for all to see on the nightly news. Certainly not the ones that have committed whichever unredeemable act needs to be an exception to this relaxation of sentencing. Shorter sentences are good, but only for the right type of criminal. For another subset, the harsh sentences are good, because the crimes are so heinous.

For some people, that unredeemable act is murder. No, the argument goes, we should not be sending people to prison for 50 years. Except for the premeditated killing of another human being. In that case, the punishment should be forever, because the crime is forever. When someone is murdered, the victim's life will always be over. The victim’s family and friends will always have to deal with this loss. It’s fair to keep someone in prison for 40 years if they kill someone because after 40 years the victim is still dead and the family is still grieving.

For others, the unredeemable crime is rape. Rapists take something from their victims forever. Rape victims have lost something that cannot be regained, and will live with their trauma for the rest of their lives. Additionally, sexual predators are some of the most likely criminals to reoffend. Thus, they should be kept in prison forever to prevent future crimes from taking place.

Then some think drug dealers should receive draconian punishments. Not low-level dealers, but those at the top. In the 1980s crack cocaine syndicates eviscerated entire neighborhoods. Criminal leaders took a vulnerable population, got them hooked on drugs, and made billions while countless lives were destroyed. The kingpins who ran these criminal networks need to be put away forever to allow these communities to heal.

Finally, as the discourse around SBF shows, some think the carceral system should maintain harsh punishments for large-scale white-collar crime. SBF stole billions of dollars. People who steal thousands are often sent to prison for years, so obviously people who steal billions should for decades. Additionally, many white-collar criminals come from affluent backgrounds. These are people who had all the advantages in life, and they still chose to steal. Unlike many offenders who are raised in toxic circumstances and have to battle through life, affluent criminals have chosen their path and thus need to receive harsh punishments.

None of these are bad arguments. There is merit to all of them. The problem, however, is that if each type of crime has a dedicated group of people who want offenders to rot away in jail, while everyone else just speaks platitudes about reducing the severity of the system, you wind up with the system we have today. Because there are good arguments for keeping murderers, rapists, drug kingpins, and billion-dollar fraudsters behind prison for decades, there are a lot of people who are going to spend most of their adult lives behind bars. People say the system is too harsh, but then shrink away from concrete policy changes when they realize that means trying to better the lives of murderers and rapists.

For those that are okay with the current system, then fine. I disagree, but I think it’s a reasonable position to believe that those who break the law should be subject to long prison sentences. My argument is for those who want the system to be less punitive, but then argue it should only apply to crimes they view as less bad. If we are going to reduce the prison population, that means reducing sentences across the board. It means figuring out how to achieve rehabilitation, not just saying we need a more rehabilitative system. And it means looking directly at people who have done terrible things and saying, “You will get a second chance.”