The dominance of loss in white-collar sentencing

I am about to head into a day talking about ways to simplify the federal guidelines, and I suspect that “loss” will be a topic of much discussion.  Coincidentally, BusinessWeek has this good primer on how these issues play out in white-collar sentencings.  Here is a snippet:

The sentencing process for white-collar criminals today has as much to do with money, i.e., investor losses, as with other factors such as remorse, community standing, or prospects for rehabilitation.  Under guidelines adopted in the post-Enron crackdown, the amount of financial havoc wreaked by a rogue executive figures prominently into his or her sentence.

Moreover, when the fraud stretches into the billions, as at Enron, Worldcom, and HealthSouth (HLS), the sentences rise to a duration that makes many legal experts question whether the justice system is shifting the role of deterrence into the realm of overkill.