The Rittenhouse Review praises the decision to send Alfred Taubman to jail. We respect Rittenhouse and think their blog is one of the best. But we respectfully disagree on this one.

How is it not inhumane to put any 78 year old non-violent offender in ill health in jail? What if this was your father?

Particularly for a financial crime. Why would home detention not be punitive enough for the man? It is very confining and would deprive him of the privileges in his life he has so taken for granted. He's going to pay 7.5 million which will undoubtedly cover the losses he's caused (and if not, he'll have to pay restitution on those).

As Rittenhouse points out, his snitch cohort and underling got home detention and she's relatively young and in good health. Why praise a sentence that is the result of a system that rewards ratting over everything else.

She sang for her supper to save her own hide, just like Sammy Gravano and countless others, by providing purchased testimony, testimony that is purchased with promises of freedom instead of money. To most people, freedom is a commodity far more precious than money. And it gives a powerful incentive to lie.