A USA Today analysis today found that high-level financial criminals, those ordered to pay $25 million or more in fines and restitution, rarely do so. In fact, the government collects 2 cents for every dollar.
Often, the convicted have lost their money, but, more often, they've purged or hidden their assets. It's just another way they have an advantage over the rest of us: They know how to engineer themselves out of their financial obligations.
The article poses this as a challenge that is likely to become even more disturbing as we start reckoning with the con artists, opportunists, and swindlers who helped deal us into the mortgage mess, and that's true. But it's also true that instead of dealing with this, states are more often concerned with nickle-and-dimeing the poor. Not only are the poor more likely to get caught up in the criminal-justice system for minor crimes and offenses in the first place, but they have to pay before they can re-enter society. This is a question of who does more damage to society, and I think it's clear to any reasonable person what the answer is.
