It is pretty damning, that this lower sentencing for the rich or powerful happens over and over again all around the world. Usually one would expect judges to do their job, but it seems at a certain level many of them lose their ability to make everyone equal before the law.

Maybe what we need are machines to calculate sentences. I am intentionally not saying AI. I mean stupid simple machines, where you input raw facts and each wrongdoing has a coefficient assigned to it, that modifies the sentence. Someone embezzled so and so much money? OK money times factor. Someone didn't reveal their side income as a politician? OK plus coefficient so and so. Just really dumb machines or programs that add up and their result is the sentence, period. No wriggling, no bs, no nothing.

But I guess that would just move the problem to "Who inputs the crimes into the machines?" and then they would cheat their way out of trouble there. It's all so maddening.