Consider two scenarios. My finance firm creates a new security that in the long run hurts people. A criminal breaks into a home and rapes a woman. I get the death penalty and he a lighter sentence for... reasons. I think you're just engaging in classism here. If anything, violence should have more serious punishments as its never justifiable outside of self-defense and can be expected to continue unless the state steps in.
Also, the finance people are the bad guys right now but when society sees what automation is truly doing to their jobs, they'll come after us. So all of us who are automators are now going to jail. Beware witchhunts, because there's nothing that keeps you from becoming a witch. Law, morals, and intent won't matter once we're designated, as a class, as 'white collar' criminals like you are doing to finance people currently.
Instead we should lean on the rule of law and not make special exemptions or special witch-hunts for any group. Write good law and policy. Don't engage in classist rhetoric that makes no sense outside of feel good and frankly, hysterical, ranting about "jailing the bankers!"
It's easy to point at the rapist; it's much harder to point at the chap who got away with his bonus while the government propped up his bank. But how many people died because of redirected funds, reduction in spending on healthcare, or even something as mundane as road upkeep, increasing vehicle accidents? White collar criminals indirectly kill people. They are scum, parasites on our social constructs.
It's not feel-good ranting, BTW. It makes me extremely angry that people try to push hot buttons like rape and murder that would anger animals, to distract from greater crimes perpetrated in more abstract ways. It's a cheap but effective trick; and I'm sick of it.
The extra leverage (and thus reward) that comes from bending the design of social constructions and the ease in dissembling is exactly why I think it should be more harshly punished, rather than less.