If is a scary thought that our laws do not enforce the same punishment for all individuals.
Actually, sometimes I fear more the "well dressed criminal" people than the regular criminals. It is very scary out there because there are so many well dressed professionals who are scamming and being illegal.
Odd as it may seems, most of these "suit" criminals receive the same punishment as a poor guy that steals groceries from WalMart just because he's hungry. Sure, the concept can be argued, but I guess you understood the point. I never saw a CEO serving 15 years at the cool house for stealing 1 billion dollars and ruining the life or 25,000 employees.
Thus, I'm going to present a classic case from Romania: You might have heard of the FNI case. (National Investment Fund, although privately owned). The people in charge of the Fund got away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Just over the night. With the life savings of hundreds of thousands of citizens. After a few years the general manager of the Fund was found in Israel and brought back to the country. She was prosecuted and senteced to 5 years in prison. Same day a court I saw a court ruling where a guy that has stolen a chicken from a neighbors' was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Later the chicken in question was found in the plaintiff's yard. But the defendant remained in prison for another 4 years. Remember, the Fund's administrator kept the money, as they were never found.
Now imagine justice. It's not a singular case. If this is how the cookie crumbles, It seems people would rather steal a few billion dollars and keep the money then steal a small amount and do more time. It doesn't make sense. If our laws were harsher maybe we wouldn't have all the repeated crime.
I am not really sure if this is really the case. I think the victim has a lot to do with sentencing, but, at least in this town, a home robbery doesn't really get a lot of police attention. A criminal would practically have to turn themselves in to even get caught. The police take a report and then sort of just let it go. And these are criminals who, in my eyes, are stealing a lot more than what can be given a monetary value.
For example, I was robbed and everything in my house was taken, but the violation and loss of security I felt in my own home could never have a price tag put on it. It's a terrible feeling to be afraid in your own house, not knowing who else may try to break in and if you're home at the time. Many white collar criminals do not break into a person's house, but I honestly think that many of them get MORE time simply because more of them are caught. Corporations spend money to catch embezzlers and that does go on their record. Most small time crooks are never even caught.
I honestly don't know of anyone who stole only a little and was sentenced to some ungodly long jail term. Now, if you're talking about one's ability to provide a legal defense, that may be why some people of money do not get more time, but still, I think even more small time criminals just never get caught at all than white collar criminals who go free with no punishment at all.
It would be interesting to see statistics on that, wouldn't it? But then, how would one gather the small-time-criminals-never-caught stats?
Anyway, I think you hit the nail on the head with the public defender issue. A high power corporate lawyer is going to know ALL the loopholes, and maybe even have only one client, whereas a public defender has way too many clients to give every single one an adequate (or better than adequate, as the case may be) defense.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman