Student Post - Titilayo Agunloye

Today we visited the US Consulate in Australia and spoke with the Consul General and others from the office. The experience was quite interesting. One topic that rang clear was the idea of the United States being the world police and world problem solver. As our lecturer spoke about his role as a federal IRS agent for Australia, he discussed the differences in criminal sentencing. In Australia, many offenses that would impose at least a minimum of ten years in the United States have a maximum sentence of five years in Australia. The Australian government views time from a different lens than in the United States. He went on to discuss some of the most common schemes investigated by his department, which were money laundering and trade based laundering. One of the things I appreciated most was the respect the United States gives to other countries criminal process. It is not easy to be present in another country with a less stringent process for sentencing criminals and to be in a country that does not want to change its process. I respect the decisions by US officials to not tamper with the country’s policy nor impose their own sentencing structure upon another entity. In sum, he discussed his primary mission in life was to make a difference in the world and he seems to be walking in that peripheral.