The The Hello and

I'm going to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

The usual two for today.

Colleen Arren will explain why she thinks a dying Bernie Madoff should get out of jail.

And the psycho analyst James and Webster makes a

return appearance to talk about money, taboos, and left melancholy.

Bernie Madoff, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, is dying of kidney disease and

probably has less than two years to live.

He's been in federal prison for over a decade serving a sentence of 150 years.

He filed a petition for compassionate release which the federal authorities denied as they do 94% of all such

applications.

Some maybe most people think he deserves to die in jail.

As investors who thought they were putting their money into something safe, were putting their money into a

rat hole.

They collectively lost over $17 billion.

But what is the right sentence for a crime like this?

What is the right sentence for any crime? It's funny to hear people opposed to mass incarceration,

even some prison abolitionists, eager to make an exception for Madoff or Roger Stone.

But if we're serious about any mass incarceration, we have to think about how to treat some seriously unpleasant people.

Colleen Arran, a sociologist who teaches at William Patterson University in New Jersey,

had an op-ed in the New York Times the other day, arguing that Madoff deserves his compassionate

release.

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