The world of Justice or Injustice

So having just watched The Wolf of Wallstreet, one thing that got my wheels turning was the sentence that Jordan Belford received for his crime of securities fraud and money laundering. For defrauding thousands of people of out about $200 million dollars, he gets 4 years. And this was in federal court.

What struck me as odd is that most federal drug offenses, many of which were non violent, automatically gets you about 6 years in prison. This has me slightly outraged, to know that my tax money pays the wages of these judges who allowed someone to get off with amounts to a slap on the wrist for a crime the likes of which is unheard of in the drug world. Your average drug offender will never see that kind of money and the fact that year’s have passed since this sentence was passed down and the man hasn’t paid off his restitution that he owes also makes me sick.

America claims to have the “greatest criminal justice system” in the world, however when you look at it, there seems to be very little justice handed out, and the way they make it seem like this is by locking up people for rather insignificant crimes (comparatively speaking) and allowing those really large criminals to operate without much punishment for their crimes at all.

Bank robbers can get less time, even if no one is injured in the commission of their crimes. Yet they will walk away with a quarter of the money if that. I fail to see the justice in a system that operates in this manner and I fail to understand, how in all honesty, once person can say they are administering justice when they know for a fact that the sentencing that exists are so slanted in many cases.

So what this tells me is that there are different levels of criminal in the United States, and that indeed money and affluence can buy you a different level of justice than those without money and resources are allowed to get. I don’t think this is the dream upon which America was founded, as a matter of fact, I feel this spits in the face of that dream and makes it a real nightmare for millions. If you are on one side of the tracks, you can expect to get let off with a slap on the wrist, if you are on the other side of the tracks, you will be buried under the jail for a seemingly harmless crime.

There are those who will argue that Jordan and many of his ilk are committing crimes that harm no one, tell this to the people who invested their savings in an attempt to earn a more comfortable life. Tell it to the mother, whose saw their dream of their children going to college vanish in a moment. Tell it to the wife who has no retirement and now has to work well past the age that most would expect to. Tell it to the husband who has to tell his wife that the stock he invested in wasn’t what he was told it would be and he’s squandered all their hard earned money on a dream of making them an easier life, but instead of an easier life, they are going to lose their home at the end of the month…victimless? I say no, there were thousands of victims as a result of their crimes and these people should not get off with a slap on the wrist.