Jail is insane by any half sensible standard but we are talking about the lol usa justice system so maybe it's par for the course. Husband is getting 5 moth in jail apparently

I read the BBC story btw
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-52759405

I don't think jail is insane. Getting into these schools is worth millions of dollars over time. These people were basically stealing that from people who were more deserving. It also cheapens the degrees of people who did get in fairly.

I agree with that except the jail bit.

Believe it or not, I agree with campfirewest, especially in the context of the U.S. justice system. We send people with far fewer advantages than Lori Loughlin to jail all the time for no more serious crimes. I'm not going to race for the fainting couch just because a wealthy, attractive person has to spend a month or two in jail, especially when she could have gotten ten days if she hadn't insisted on pressing a hopeless legal position.

Honestly, **** these parents who did this.

Indeed. I agree on the bolded bit as well and made the same point. If jail is par for the course then they should go to jail but it's an insane course.

but college is a long-cherished opportunity economy.

Jail is definitely excessive. Massive FBI investigation was definitely excessive.

They tried to bribe their kids way into a college they did not meet the academic requirements for.

Is it fair? No. Was it a good thing to do? Nope.

Public embarrassment, a hefty fine (that they can all afford) and community service requirements would have been fine.

The parents are not career criminals. They did something dumb. Now, the corrupt coaches and people receiving the money, they deserve big punishment.

But, colleges have all sorts of other criteria for getting in beyond academic merit. Good athlete? Yup, come and we will pay for it. Legacy? Yup, your parents went here, so you don't need to be as smart. Friends with the Dean of Admissions? Yup. We will put you to the top of the list.

From a story about Harvard:
In a rare window into admissions at one of the world's most elite universities, a lawsuit against Harvard revealed details about a confidential "Dean's Interest List" that often gave preferential treatment to relatives of major donors, according to The Harvard Crimson. Court records showed that the acceptance rate for students on it and another similar list over a six-year period was 42.2%, and a dean admitted in pretrial testimony that financial contributions can give applicants a boost, the student newspaper reported.


The system in place is not a merit based system to begin with. FREE AUNT BECKY!

This was from the same article I quoted above:

More recently, hip-hop star Dr. Dre made news after the Operation Varsity Blues scandal broke when he shared a post on Instagram that said: "My daughter got accepted into USC all on her own. No jail time!!!" He later deleted the post after it emerged that he donated $70 million to the University of Southern California, one of the schools caught up in the bribery scandal.

It is not obvious to me that the person accepting the bribe deserves a much harsher punishment than the person paying the bribe. The ringleader of this shitshow of course deserves a harsher punishment.

Was anyone naïve enough to think that the relatives of major donors did not get a huge leg up in admissions?

I don't remember the details, but I vaguely remember that the whole thing smelled like entrapment.

If I remember correctly, the middle man Laughlin and her husband did the bribe through (who was an FBI informant) advised them to go about the bribe in such a way to make it legally much worse when they got caught.

I am guessing if the FBI wasn't involved actively entrapping them they would have gone about this in a way that would have warranted no jail time at all.

What do you think the punishment should be?

In theory, because of her, someone who would have been accepted wasn't. Suppose someone did that to another directly rather than indirectly?

Since we know thousands of kids get in to these schools that shouldn't on their own merit, and all of them took a spot from someone else, I don't see the point of taking this line.

I can see a legal argument making sense. Break the law and get punished for it. But the moral argument doesn't seem to work very well in this case.

Community service and fines seems good. And a criminal conviction of course.

+1

It seems to me that there's two ways of thinking about the sentence:

1) is it fair?
2) is it right?

I think that in my ideal world, they wouldn't do jail time. Because it doesn't seem like there's any real purpose to it. They aren't an ongoing threat to society, and a very (materially) large fine and public shaming is probably as much of a deterrent as necessary. So I don't think it's right, exactly.

But, on the other hand, I very much think it is fair. I think this is the dimension you are considering. Fair is a relative consideration, and given how many other people we throw in jail that probably don't need to be there, it would be unfair if celebrity and wealth got them out of it.

If you're the judge, which should you prioritize? Being fair, or being right? I think this is pretty difficult, and I could make a reasonable argument either way, on different grounds. For at least a few reasons, I lean towards being fair, but those reasons are actually pretty specific to the high-profile nature of the case, e.g. I think the signalling value of fairness might be more important here, whereas any small incremental move towards more correctness would be more important in less high-profile circumstances.

But, I don't think it's a slam dunk.

As usual, I agree with all this.

she'll probably do a week in jail and get let out for covid 19 reasons

It is one thing to advocate for social justice (which seems to be a pretty good synonym with your fairness concept) to keep people out of jail. But when you start arguing it to put people in jail, gets real dicey real quick IMO.

Too small.

Right, she basically stole a significant amount of future earning power from someone else. Except the amount is unknown and there isn't a specific person to point to. But to me its not really a different end result than breaking into a house and stealing the same amount of money, or perhaps stealing money in a non-violent bank robbery. In those cases most people would expect the culprit to spend some time in jail.

But this is actually much worse. The corruption reduces the quality of what are supposed to be elite schools, and it calls into question the credentials of people who went to those schools and did it on the level. You also have legitimate athletes losing spots on teams.

Definitely. Though in this case 2 months is a lot less dicey than if it were 2 years...