The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he’s in isn’t accommodating his vegan diet.
Hate the guy, pretty much, but tbh if it’s true this isn’t okay.
Crimes aside, punishment should not include limiting a person’s diet or basic food options. No one’s asking for gourmet in prisons, but basic fruits and vegetables should be the baseline.
Read the article. The jail can provide vegetarian, but not vegan.
Jail isn’t fun.
Jail isn’t fun, no, but its also supposed to be about reformation, not straight punishment.
If all we do is punish them, they have no real incentive to change. Just do a better job of not getting caught next time.
Or, in Sammy’s case, choose less influential people to bilk.
This isn’t punishment yet. Not for his financial crimes anyway. He’s being held because he allegedly violated his bond through witness tampering and because he can’t stop flapping his mouth to the media. The judge has an obligation to preserve the court’s integrity throughout the case, for both the plaintiff and the defendant, and that means limiting the defendant’s freedom.
is jail really the best thing here? like does it serve society at all to lock this guy up?
If you don’t, aren’t you just saying to the next con man that it’s okay, jail is too hard so you won’t actually get punished, might as well steal billions of dollars?
i don’t think he’s a malicious conman trying to swindle grandma out of her retirement: i think he’s a stupid guy who dug a whole way too fucking deep. and i don’t think we should put people in cages for being stupid.
Do you even know the case? If that dude isn’t a malicious conman, that phrase has no meaning.
You think a guy who graduated from MIT and got a job at fucking Jane Street is “stupid”. No. His problem is the missing moral compass, he’s got the smarts all day.
Yes.
This guy stole billions of dollars in fraudulent crypto.
Not locking him up would be to admit the 2 tiered justice system exists. We all know it does. But this would admit it.
Also he did try to run. So… off to jail he goes.
locking him up won’t get anyone their money back. i don’t know what would be the right thing to do but i don’t see how keepin him in a cage helps anyone.
Make him work in a sweatshop 16 hours a day until he can pay back everything he stole?
The main thing is to dissuade people from doing what he did, right?
Fuck around and find out and all that.
If it has any actual use for anyone (e.g. separating dangerous people from society, taking stolen property/money back, preventing them from committing more crimes etc), that’s entirely unintentional.
His bail was revoked because he was contacting witnesses.
Classic example of fuck around and find out.
It’s called “justice” and in an ideal society it comes for everyone.
He commited billions of dollars worth of fraud. This was an intentional act. It might not “do any good”- but let me ask you, in a nation of laws, would allowing one that blatant to escape justice do any good? And what about the harm caused by signaling that Stanford-lawyer-parents means you’re immune to prosecution?
Lock him up. Give him his crappy budget-vegan-diet and let him serve as an example. (Even if only that example is to not steal from rich assholes.)
It’s interesting to me to meet someone wholly anti jail. I think our “justice system” is anything but, and at least that’s partially because we have a completely muddled idea about what we’re even trying to accomplish - mostly because of all these different opinions.
It seems pretty clear that our jails are “technically” just this side of cruel and unusual punishment as defined by our courts. But it’s all about punishment. Of course this assumes that retribution is a useful goal, and as you point out - it probably isn’t.
It’s also dubious that there’s any deterrence effect from jail sentences. Lots of people believe there is, but the studies I’ve seen don’t bear that out.
It’s also pretty clear that jail is expensive and just as likely to make criminals worse rather than better, so from a societal perspective, there’s a really good reason to re-think our justice system.
However, given our current system is about punishment and making victims and society at large feel better because “those who fucked around found out” - I would still prefer to see this guy get his to remind people we do in fact have laws and might enforce them.
i don’t relish the idea of keeping people in cages and this guy in particular just seems stupid. i don’t think there is a good case to be made that inconveniencing him for weeks months or years does us any good, especially since maintaining jails is, itself, kind of inconvenient for us.
i don’t relish the idea of keeping people in cages
I’m personally of the opinion that it’s sadly necessary sometimes, but we definitely overuse it and it’s always a tragedy when things get to the point where it’s necessary.
Regardless of my opinion though, if you’re interested in this you should probably check out this bit from a textbook on criminal law talking about the theoretical justifications for punishment because lots of people have thought and written lots about this and you may as well pick up the terminology they tend to use.
e; also, these are the arguments you’re going to run into (pretty sure I see deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation theories in this thread)
Our society locks up more than just dangerous criminals. And if you’re arguing against it there’s probably millions of people more deserving of more lenient charges than this guy.
if you’re arguing against it there’s probably millions of people more deserving of more lenient charges than this guy.
no doubt. but this is the guy we’re talking about right now so i thought it was worth pointing out that jail is bad and we need to rethink that whole thing.
are you arguing that he shouldn’t be sent to prison if he is found guilty? or that having him in jail until trial is a mistake?
the first one: yes, if he is found guilty, he definitely should be sent to prison. he is accused of committing fraud for billions of dollars.
for the second: yes. his bail was revoked because there was reasonable cause to believe he was attempting to tamper with witnesses
Jail should accommodate a vegan diet, but it also seems like they are to some extent. PB sandwiches are food. As long as he can cobble together a nutritionally complete diet, it isn’t cruel to have boring meals. Obviously JUST peanut butter sandwiches won’t do it but I have to think they have potatoes, beans, rice on the menu too, stuff like that.
Jail should accommodate a vegan diet
I think that should go without saying, and the real question is why isn’t it the default? Why are we bothering to give prisoners (inherently relatively expensive/less sustainable) meat or dairy to begin with?
Because meat isn’t taxes properly so that having a decent meat based diet is cheaper than having a decent plant based one
Sure there are a lot of cheap vegan meals, too, but some of them are harder and/or take longer to prepare than cheap meat-based food
I’d guess the dairy/meat lobby would complain a lot of they didn’t have people forced to eat their stuff in prison
Id guess it’s a very nice baseline of product-sales
