The US crackdown on white-collar crime is leading to less severe sentences. That was the message some legal experts took from Chicago on Monday after Conrad Black was sentenced to 6½ years in prison for committing fraud and obstructing justice.

Prosecutors sought to put the British peer and former Hollinger executive behind bars for more than two decades, a sentence that would have fallen in line with those for other big-name white-collar criminals such as Bernie Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom.