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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Here is a weird example of where I'm going to be the one saying this sentence is too long, while lots of HN people will be saying this is finally(!) an example of someone who actually deserves a harsh sentence.

Not because Seleznev merits any sympathy. He does not. Moreover, he's part of a class of people who I think deserve the very least amount of empathy in our public policy (people with ability and opportunities who weren't forced by circumstance into crime, but pursued it out of vanity and avarice).

Rather, the problem is that 27 years doesn't accomplish anything that 5 years wouldn't. Presuming that the result of this conviction is that the USG can effectively claw back much of the proceeds of the crimes, then 5 years would presumably have the same retributive and deterrent effects.

Our sentences are too long across the board.

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"Presuming that the result of this conviction is that the USG can effectively claw back much of the proceeds of the crimes, then 5 years would presumably have the same retributive and deterrent effects."

I can see a strong argument for same, or close to the same, deterrent effects -- it's a pretty straightforward marginal argument supported in the literature (i.e. the swiftness and sureness of a punishment has more of an influence on deterrence than the severity of the punishment).

But I don't see how you can make that argument for retributive effect. The worse the punishment the stronger the retributive effect. In order for the retributive effect to be about the same for five years and 27 years there'd have to be diminishing marginal disutility to offender for additional years of prison. I don't think that's empirically observed -- prisons use the threat of additional time, along with privileges, as a management tool inside prisons.

Whether or not we as a society should be satisfied with the disutility of five years worth of prison for this particular crime and whether retribitutivism is an appropriate measure of justice to begin with are different questions.

The harm to the government and to financial institutions was acute, but the harm to individuals was (mostly) diffuse. What single victim of Seleznev's would have an argument for suffering beyond (say) 5 years?

It's not actually the case that more punishment = more retribution. The concept of retributive justice is that society should mete out a proportionate punishment, rather than see justice miscarried in either direction, or carried out haphazardly by victims themselves.

Likely there is a political angle here, given that dad is a big-name Russian. I can't see any reasonable explanation why this guy should get 27 years and others get away with much less.

I do want to remind you of all your past comments where you were adamant that people are not sentenced to such lengths and that therefore we should not take any of those long prison threats terms serious.

The sentence probably isn't political. Seleznev really was working at a scale that surpasses that of pretty much anyone else the FBI was tracking for similar crimes. It was a monumentally brazen and damaging operation.

That's twice the average for murder.

So if he defrauded 100k people we can say that defrauding one person is 1/50k as bad as murder?

Only if you consider prison to only be punishment and that punishment should scale linearly to the 'badness' of the crime

No, it's not. The average federal sentence for murder, which takes into account as many cases in which there are mitigating factors as ones where there are aggravating factors, is 20 years.

There are in this particular case no mitigating factors we can see, and several aggravating ones.

http://www.iapsonline.com/sites/default/files/Prison%20Sente...

Has the average time served at 48% of the sentence at 71 months.

140 months is a shade under 12 years.

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Since it's a federal charge, unless he cuts some kind of deal that moots this whole sentence, he will likely serve most of it. There's no federal parole, only a marginal reduction in time for good behavior.

I'll delete my comment and point people to yours, which is more correct :)

You're comparing federal to state sentences. Nothing harmonizes the two, and states generally parole inmates, which the federal system does not. That's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

I think it's disingenuous to think that there is no political aspect to the sentencing, not necessarily because he is the son of a Russian politician but rather because Russia refuses to cooperate with attempts to arrest these criminals the US are going to nail those that they can to make a point.

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