A Teaching
We don’t see near enough of these. The deterrent effect is 100X more effective against politicians and bureaucrats than with hardened-criminals, mainly from since they were in school, they confused “courage” with “bullying”, e.g. David Hogg in the current generation.
When mobsters go to prison, they just change location. If they had on-going operations and organizations, they just keep them going on in their absence. Being mostly alpha-males, they take their 2, 5, 10 years in stir in stride, using regular phone calls and visitation periods to stay in touch…an control. If they have good lawyers they will spend a good deal of effort in arranging the best possible prison environment in terms of manipulability (getting favors), food, even entertainments.
Before gangsters became successful mobsters, most had a lot of on-the-job-training under the guidance of an earlier generation of mobsters, so usually had a pretty good notion of the general environment of prison by the time they were 20.
And mobsters knew how everything worked in their line of business, so were at the top of the evolutionary scale in their chosen criminal line.
When politicians go to prison, although some are master-manipulators with their tongues, they never look upon their feats of prestidigitation with other people’s money as crimes, but rather, much like Russians who see a passed-out drunk on the ground, his wallet inside his coat pocket visible, and just too easy a lift to pass up. It never occurs to them to protect the weak, defenseless man from further loss.
And after a short period of time, it becomes so routine as to be almost a reflex action to take that money. Even a duty. Former Democrat Texas Governor John Connolly (who was also shot in that car with JFK in Dallas) and later became a Republican senator and Nixon cabinet member, and a wealthy man, was indicted in 1974 for pocketing a paltry $10,000 for influencing a milk price decision in Texas. Why? Because it was considered to be a standard fee for influence in those days and he could not bring himself to do it for free. Politicians never do anything for free.) Connolly was acquitted on the strength of character witness from Jacqueline Kennedy, Rev Billy Graham, Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk. He didn’t go to prison, but he days of getting freebies were over.
Politicians would find a prison environment unbearable, but like mobsters, they would also have the good sense to seek the best possible prison environment. But unlike mobsters, they would find prison restraints unbearable, and their ability to lie and get away with it sharply curtailed. They would also go to great lengths to avoid dropping their soap in the shower rooms…well, with a few exceptions.
When bureaucrats go to prison, and they almost never do, it also will be the most inhospitable place in their imagination. Like whores in church.
Unlike either gangland mobsters or politicians, bureaucrats are master in being able to pull off near-perfect crimes, and to be able to erase every fingerprint or foot trail that would link them to the crime.
Money is often not the purpose of the bureaucratic criminal. In fact, crime isn’t even the original purpose. Bureaucracies never create themselves. They are created by other people, sometimes even mobsters or politicians (more often the latter).
Federal bureaucrats are a species unto themselves, and even the likes of Anthony Fauci, who is the most senior of bureaucrats in the federal government, would find himself most despised in prison….should the prison population ever find out who is. Most bureaucrats are empty suits even in real life, nondescript and plain, and could easily do 2, 5, even 10, years in total anonymity…if only they could bring themselves to tell fellow inmates that were ran a dry cleaner in Toledo, and had a few too many one night and ran over a bicyclist on the way home one night.
Their cells, and the ordered way they are laid out would be their safest retreat, the shower room the worst…especially if anyone ever found out they had worked at the county clerk’s office, or DMV,
My bottom line:
Give Prison a chance. If they can escape with millions in the bank, and leave millions of Americans, their victims, in the lurch, I submit just being rid of them simply isn’t enough. There are some fates worse than death. And for bureaucrats and crooked politicians, prison is just such a fate.
