Risk assessment tools used in courts are often trained on old data and fail to account for societal shifts in crime and policing, creating "cohort bias." This leads to massive overpredictions of an individual's likelihood to commit a crime, resulting in harsher, unjust sentences.

Unlike common law fraud, civil RICO cases don't require plaintiffs to prove they directly relied on misrepresentations. The focus shifts to whether the defendant's racketeering activity proximately caused the economic injury, making it a powerful tool for large-scale, indirect fraud cases.

In complex scandals, parsing individuals into distinct groups—active criminals, morally compromised associates, and unwitting attendees—is crucial. Conflating everyone prevents targeted accountability for the worst offenders while unfairly punishing those on the periphery.

Proving intent for white-collar crimes is difficult. Prosecutors overcome this by charging suspects with the simpler, 'bright-line' crime of bank fraud (e.g., lying on an application). This provides leverage and an easier path to conviction, regardless of the primary alleged crime.

The danger of the insanity plea isn't the diagnosis, but that mental hospital stays are tied to a patient's current mental state. This allows violent offenders to be released early. Tying the length of stay to the crime's severity, regardless of location (prison vs. hospital), ensures public safety.

Financial institutions are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with the government. These detailed memos, funded by the banks, often serve as pre-written indictments for prosecutors, who can sometimes directly copy the narrative into a formal legal complaint, effectively outsourcing investigative work.

When a public figure's reputation and consequences are already at rock bottom, participating in a tell-all documentary becomes a no-lose scenario. With a prison sentence already secured, there is no further downside, only the potential upside of generating public sympathy or shifting the narrative.

Most crimes are committed by people under 35, and recidivism rates for those over 50 are near zero. Despite this, the fastest-growing demographic in U.S. prisons is people over 55. This highlights a costly misalignment between sentencing policies and the reality of criminal behavior over a lifespan.

Despite operating over 12 million diagnostic tests, federal prosecutors failed to convict Elizabeth Holmes of patient harm after presenting only four patient testimonies. The jury acquitted her of patient fraud, finding her guilty strictly on investor fraud and conspiracy charges.