My concern, honestly, isn't with getting the injured party lots of $$. He's already received his job back, plus back pay; the BOP has given him recompense commiserate with what he lost, IMO. I'm not a fan of large pay-outs to someone for being a victim; while I sympathize with them and want them to get back everything they deserve, I'm not gonna vote for them to get -more- than they deserve. The potential for large pay-outs has prompted many frivolous lawsuits, and should be discouraged, IMO (for example, the "McDonalds coffee lawsuit"). The practice has actually encouraged the mindset of victim-hood we see these days, by rewarding it through gross sums of money.frankie_the_yankee wrote:The individuals involved should certainly be held accountable.
But realisticly, the individuals responsible probably don't have any money to speak of. So even if they are pauperized, the injured party won't be able to collect anything of significance.
In addition, while the individuals are directly responsible, the taxpayers (voters) share some of the responsibility as well. They are the ones who elected the fools who proceeded to appoint/hire people with bad judgement who then made some bad decisions.
I am of the belief that if voters do stupid things, they should be made to pay for their mistakes. Sure, people who voted with more wisdom will have to pay as well. But the hope is that by holding voters accountable, they will consider their votes more carefully in the future.
The voters of Hawaii have long needed a wake up call. Maybe this case could be the beginning.
My focus is toward deterrence of future misconduct by individuals within government. Punish the individual, and his cohorts are a little more likely to actually obey the law, instead of making it up as they go along (coughcoughATFcoughcough). But if you allow the taxpayer to get soaked, then there's no immediate consequence for misconduct on the part of the individuals. The best way to deal with crime is to remove and punish the criminals, giving future potential criminals reason to pause; even honest folks elected to office by well-read, well-educated voters have turned deceitful, or been fooled into appointing deceitful people.
Now, if it was official policy that prompted this, policy in violation of federal law, then everyone involved in this from the BOP end of things should be hung out to dry, up to and including the agency. If it was agency policy that caused this, disregard my above statements; it takes a LOT more to "correct" a gov't entity as a whole.
