Throw the book at them

Too often, white-collar crime is treated as a lesser crime, a crime undeserving of prison time in all but the most severe cases.
That's wrong, for a number of reasons.
White-collar criminals shouldn't be able to stuff their pockets with loot and then walk away from punishment on the grounds that embarrassment, loss of professional standing or the pain of disgracing their families was punishment enough.
When that happens, the entire criminal justice system is put off-balance.
Double standard: For some reason, courts seem willing to give probation to white-collar criminals who steal hundreds of thousands of dollars while the petty thief or robber gets jail time. Granted, a criminal who uses a firearm in commission of a crime deserves harsher treatment than a pencil-pusher, but that's why Ohio law has a gun specification provision that adds three-years to a gunman's sentence.
Today's call for proper punishment of white-collar criminals is inspired by a story last week that said a dozen northeast Ohio doctors and medical professionals have been implicated in a $1 million federal insurance fraud scheme.
Society's loss: That's a million dollars taken out of an overtaxed medical system, a million dollars that instead of providing care for patients was diverted into the cash registers of unscrupulous practitioners. It is impossible to calculate the damage that is done to a society when scarce medical resources are misappropriated.
So far, one man, a Stow chiropractor who took $62,000 in kickbacks from a diagnostic lab operator has been sentenced to four months in jail. That's a good start, and it should provide a benchmark for the minimum jail time that others who have been implicated should face.
White-collar crime is not a gentleman's game and its practitioners should be treated not as gentlemen, but as common criminals -- by the law and by their peers.