It's widely covered here in Latvian local media - the general message is that there are grounds to charge (and likely convict) him with a bunch of crimes locally; but -
1) local prosecution claims that there aren't any grounds to prosecute on ~half of claims that USA wants to charge;
2) defense lawyers claim and popular sentiment (including politicians) believe that USA doesn't have a just/fair court system for computer related crimes;
3) there is a strong position for local jurisdiction in crimes in "cyberspace" - if some action is legal locally, then people shouldn't care if it's illegal in USA; if some crime carries max penalty of 5 years, as is here for computer fraud; then extraditing him for charges of the USA requested 67 years - essentially life sentence - is unacceptable.
It's becoming increasingly scarier that US can start extraditing people from other countries because they somehow did some wrong to them because what he did was "on the Internet", and US happens to have a large portion of the traffic - especially when some of these crimes aren't even crimes locally, and what he did was legal in his own country.
Imagine if China all of the sudden starts wanting countries to extradite people that talk badly about China or help their citizens avoid censorship or whatever, and imagine they actually had the political power to do that, like US has right now.
The whole point is that if they physically robbed a local branch of an USA bank, stealing money of USA citizens and say, even killing USA citizens in the process, then they wouldn't be extradited nor prosecuted for USA laws. And, by the way, even armed robbery w. killings (IMHO far worse than any amount of theft/fraud) would still carry less penalty than the 67 years currently requested, barring serious aggravating circumstances.
The Lockerbie bombers were tried in the Netherlands by a Scottish Court under Scots Law, with a weird jurisdictional set up, as part of a negotiated compromise to resolve US/UK demands that they be tried in the US or UK, and Libyan demands that they not be tried in the US or UK, and the location and other arrangements for the trial do not represent any "long-established principle in international law", unless you include the principle that international law is mostly just whatever the involved sovereign states agree to at the time on the specific issue in question.
>international law is mostly just whatever the involved sovereign states agree to at the time on the specific issue in question.
Thank you. I've long made the argument that international law is arbitrary and capricious without much buy-in from those around me. It's good to hear you say it.
I'm not saying that there aren't some fairly well-settled substantive principles of international law that aren't just arbitrary and capricious, I'm just saying that you don't find any of them illustrated by the decision of where to locate the Lockerbie bombing trial.
(OTOH, even where there are well-established principles of international law, the absence of consistent enforcement and application leads to them not being inviolate.)
Ugh, in that case NSA staff and Mr. Obama, should come to stand before European court and after that to all other countries that wish so (Russia, China, etc.)
yes its worse instead of one large institution that can support the loss you are robbing a million members of Joe public who probably wont be able to suffer that loss as easily.
Bonnie an Clyde became folk heroes for striking it to the man they wound not have if they had robbed lots of poor farmers.
Just create a law that forces bank to refund defrauded customers. Now you're robbing one large institution that can support the loss once again, problem solved.
FYI, such laws already exist - in EU, most of the consumer losses in such frauds have to be compensated by the bank. It's not always pleasant but it motivates banks to take effective measurements against identity theft. Many of USA identity theft horror stories could never happen here; as soon as their own cash is threatened, banks can be much mire diligent.
yeah given the banks track record in dragging their feet over phantom atm withdrawals thats going to work real well.
The banks will probably try to blame the victim to avoid paying out you must have shared/written down your banking password and/or start selling cyber insurance which will become the next PPI scam in a few years.
If they robbed a bank physically they'd have to have visited the U.S. and it's clear what country they committed a crime in. It is not as clear-cut when they have never been to the U.S.
it's difficult to take US seriously when it has 67 year sentences for stuff like this. This is ridicolous. You did it to yourself. It's difficult to take you seriously. This and a global war with a billion Muslims that goes for a decade because some idiots blew up couple of buildings in New York. Are you for real? Wake up!
Correspondingly, it's difficult to take people seriously who honestly believe the U.S. is at war with Islam, and not terrorism. Has the U.S. started dropping cluster bombs in Indonesia and I just missed it somehow?
I think Bush is when we all started taking the US not really so seriously. Or things like the moment we notice the US population still supports him at large even when he says he has to attack Iraq because God told him so. You're just so immature as people and a nation.
> Or things like the moment we notice the US population still supports him at large even when he says he has to attack Iraq because God told him so.
Uh, dude, Dubya was so reviled even within the U.S. that he wasn't even invited to Republican political events oriented around electing his own successor. And you may have missed it in the news by he had more "justifications" that he claimed for attacking than merely a God-given mission.
But it's funny you should mention immaturity, given that few would consider pinning a person's thoughts (even the POTUS) as reasonably representative of 320 million people's thoughts.
The first time they voted for Gore. Perhaps you are too young to remember though.
The second time there were rather virulent protests, celebrity protest (including an Eminem music video) right up to one of the narrowest election victories in some time. I remember it vividly because it was my first election I could vote in. :P
My point is that in most if not all EU countries Bush wouldn't even be a serious contender. However, I do feel for you, and others who are opposed to the certain development that happened since 9/11 but have no say in the decision making process. On the other hand maybe the thing is that you are not really trying. It's not like in 1960s with students on the streets. It's like people are 'outraged' and then all this rage causes them to sit down and do nothing. We (I'm an American too) need a serious revolution in our fatherland and not debating the Constitution haters. If you hate and want to destroy the US Constitution there is no place for you in the US. All these guys go there on the streets (when they actually do - OWS - too socialist for me) and then they let the police do whatever. It's not like 1960s. That's exactly why the Government feels so bold to do stuff like PRISM. Because it can't hear or see serious voices of discontent.
As far as I'm concerned, the US's cultural acceptance of prison rape should be enough to stop any extradition to the US for any crime that would garner prison time.
For me the scariest idea is that a private company who runs the prison gets to decide how will you be trated there and how many additional punishments you'll have to suffer through and noone questions their right to basically own you.
A perverse and scary outlook they might possibly have: keep prison conditions in a way so that you continue to see high recidivism rates. Because if the prisoners keep coming back, that means you have easy repeat business.
There is of course concrete evidence to the contrary, as experiments in Scandinavian countries show. Treat prisoners with respect, give them a dignified place of living so they can think about what they did, and you'll find that actually both improves their mental condition and makes them very well suited to rejoin society.
"Ohio's deal requires the state to maintain a 90% occupancy rate, but Janes said that provision remains in effect for 18 months — not 20 years — before it can be renegotiated. As part of the deal, Ohio pays the company a monthly fee, totaling $3.8 million per year." [1]
Another big problem with private prisons and juvenile centers is that judges get greased to send kids to specific centers. [2]
My thought is that the justice system should exist to make the country a better place. If criminals can be rehabilitated, they should be. If they can't, why are we keeping them alive for 50 years in a cage, raping people?
Prison isn't the solution to every criminal problem, and harsh prisons just seem to produce more harden criminals. I wish we got over our squeamishness for non-prison punishments. For example, the "nanny cam" robber in NJ had twelve prior convictions, including one for a similar crime. You should watch the video, but I warn you it is graphic[1]. What does he add to society by staying alive?
Is he going to turn his life around at the age of 42 and suddenly become a good father, an influential artist, or a visionary scientist? Or hell, even a guy with a steady job that doesn't commit gratuitous acts of violence against his fellow citizens? I fear no matter how far we lower the bar, this man will not pass it.
Maybe I'm naive, but I reread "The Diamond Age" recently and I had a lot of respect for the brand of justice dispensed by Judge Fang. For example, Judge Fang would probably not order the death penalty on criminals like this[2] (again, graphic video) because they are young and probably much more malleable. But they need a punishment that is strongly focused on rehabilitation. In our justice system they will be sent to a prison that will only harden their criminal tendencies.
"...the "nanny cam" robber in NJ had twelve prior convictions..."
That sounds like a person CREATED by prisons. Probably became MORE criminal after serving his first term. That much more criminal after the second. Etc.. etc.
We mightn't even need the non-prison punishments were it not for our ... prisons??? Which is ... weird to think about.
A lot of our crime may not even be committed if our prisons were not tantamount to "Crime College for Criminals"?
> I do not know anyone with the mentality of "prison should be as harsh as possible"
Go to facebook, find a local newspaper's page. Find a story about a rapist or someone guilty of animal cruelty or neglect.
Here are a couple of quotes I found from comments on my local paper (in the UK):
"It doesn't matter what went wrong he decided to take other peoples possesions by his own choice.he chose to invade peoples homes and didn't care what state he left houses or how the people felt afterwards he is scum.its people like him that ruin lives and he got off lightly from our weak judicial system and needs knee caps drilling as a reminder of why he should keep his thieving hands in his pockets in future." (7 likes)
"All peados should be put into a mincer machine feet first, then when they pass out shut it off, then when they wake turn it bk on. Don't get why they get put on separate part of prison, throw them in with the other prisoners and let them get delt with! SICK CUNTS !!!!!" (4 likes)
Personally, I'd go even further. The very idea that prison is primarily about punishment (revenge by proxy?) instead of rehabilitation is wrongheaded.
The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.
The recidivism rate in Sweden is 35%. Which means, that even with a rehabilitative-oriented system, you still have 1/3 of prisoners returning to jail. It does provide some substance to the claim that some criminals can't be rehabilitated, because even in one of the "best" systems, you still have a large number going back to prison.
Of course, the US recidivism rate is 67%, which is horrible, however it's very difficult to compare Sweden and the United States simply because you have some significant differences. It's difficult to assume that the only variable in play between the US and Nordic countries are simply the justice system.
First, you have a demographic differences. You also have significant differences in culture as well. In Sweden for example, single parent families are just 20% of all families with children. Yet in the US, 67% of all black families with children are single-parent, with 42% in the Latino community and overall a rate of over 30% for all families with children in the United States. In 1960, the overall rate was just 9%. I'm not arguing for or against single parent families, but there is a strong correlation between the likelihood of being arrested and the strength of the family unit. Here's an article that discusses it more, including research citations: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-co...
Suggesting that the prison system is the primary cause of recidivism is to miss the point. We shouldn't be focusing on recidivism, we should be focusing on what gets people into prison in the first place.
This is a very good point. Sweden also has a very extensive safety net, so government will give you a home and enough money to live on if you can't get a job. While it's really expensive on the surface, it's an excellent crime deterrent: why risk doing crimes when you can just sit on your ass playing Xbox? A welfare mooch is much cheaper per year than a prisoner.
Sweden has a growing problem with crime in an immigrant population[1] that does not feel it is part of Swedish culture[2]. Soon, the Swedish will have the same governance problems as America stemming from a multicultural society.
That's not really the underlying cause. The US has a much higher (as in: an order of magnitude higher) incarceration rate than the Nordic (or some Central European) countries.
But the same cannot be said of crime rates. Crime rates in the US tend to be higher, but not nearly that much higher and not across the board.
What sets the US apart that leads to high incarceration rates is primarily harsh sentencing (longer sentences, fewer suspended sentences, high minimum sentences, a general focus on retribution over rehabilitation, the "felonization" [1] of everything under the sun).
[2] Yes, the book is a bit sensationalist, but there's plenty of truth to it. See, e.g. the Kiera Wilmot case [3]: What she did wouldn't have even risen to the level of a misdemeanor in most Western European countries.
It's worth noting that 7% of the US population commits 53% of the murders. Can you guess which demographic group that is? I'll give you a hint, it's not descended from Europeans. So even if you eliminated all the crime committed by European-descended Americans, America would still have a higher crime rate than European countries.
Europeans who criticize America often imagine it to be a country of European colonists. That's increasingly not true. European multiculturalists also expect that a person's cultural background will have zero influence on them. That is also not true.
There is no demographic group in the US as large as 7% that is not "descended from Europeans". If that is incorrect, then I need more hints, or perhaps you could be courageous enough to name it. We almost all have significant European ancestry, and every human is descended from Africans.
If you're being pedantic, it is true that African Americans have on average about 30% European genetic admixture. The facts presented are still quite striking, no?
So the lightbulb has appeared and you've acknowledged that "African Americans", like most Americans, are descended from both Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans, and that there is no demographic group satisfying your initial description.
I think that data about crime rates related to different demographic groups is quite important. My purpose is not to be pedantic, although I do enjoy that, but to help clarify the thinking of those who might confuse this demographic data with outmoded and superstitious ideas about "race". I'm sure you're much too knowledgeable to fall into this trap, but there could be others, not as sophisticated as you, who might suffer from common misconceptions about genetics, race, and related issues.
87% of Americans are not descended from a recent Sub-Saharan African population (where recent is defined as within the last 80,000 years). African Americans form a genetically distinct American subpopulation with about 70-80% of genes from Africa. If you sent in spit samples to 23andMe from a white American and an African American, 23andMe would have no problem telling them apart. If race did not exist, this would not be possible.
It is interesting that crime rates and other social pathologies are so segregated by race in America. Different experts have different explanations for this. The point is, comparing America against Europe is hard to do when the racial makeup of the two countries is so different.
The legacy of slavery in America cannot be avoided. 14-24 year old African American males make up 1% of the USA population and commit 27% of the murders. Europe had no large scale agricultural African slavery in the 19th century, and its current society has evolved differently as a result.
I agree that government-defined racial categories are too broad and inexact. The true amount of human genetic diversity is far larger and far messier than five racial categories would suggest. Andrew Sullivan addressed the myth that "race is a social construct" on his blog[1].
Europe also didn't allow racism to prevent it from building a functional social safety net for the majority ethnicities. Or allow racism to propel a targetted drug war that has ghettoized inner city minority neighborhoods. Or allow racism to migrate most of the accumulated wealth of the country into newly constructed suburban jurisdictions with higher-quality subsidized public services, while employing public sector institutional finance mechanisms to deny investments to minorities. Or allow the tax and budget mechanisms to actively redistribute large quantities of wealth from cities where minorities are concentrated, to rural regions with almost no minorities. So there's that.
You've suddenly introduced a new concept: "recent". I don't see how it's relevant. A gene will encode the same protein regardless of when it was introduced into the genome.
"23andMe would have no problem telling them apart"
If someone you define as "black" marries someone you define as "white" and their child sends a sample to 23andMe, will the report say that the child is white or black? Remember, you claim they will have "no problem".
Andrew Sullivan, from the link you provided: '“race” is a social construct when we define it as “white”, “black,” “Asian” or, even more ludicrously, “Hispanic.”'
The "recent"-ness of common ancestry (or lack thereof) is what separates you from a Chimpanzee. 80,000 years of evolution matters, so you will find that peoples from Europe have many different genotypes and phenotypes from people in Africa (or any other part of the world, for that matter). For example, people in Europe have no incidence of sickle cell disease, a recessive genetic disease that in its heterozygous form grants resistance to malaria. Malaria is not prevalent in Europe, so such a mutation would confer no survival benefit to Europeans as it does in Africans. And indeed natural selection does work so we see no sickle cell disease in Europeans as we do in Africans. Lots of other traits vary across the world, too. Almost all Northern Europeans can digest milk as an adult while few Africans can. West Africa consistently has the fastest runners in the world [1].
It is not hard to take a listing of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a persons DNA and compare them against a database of genetic sequences from various parts of the world to tell where they came from. The same mutation occurring in parallel in two different populations and persisting is rare enough that you can use SNP data to construct a phylogenetic tree of the human population (here is one I googled up[2]). We can tell interesting things from human population genetics, for example that Amerindians probably came from Asia, since the East Asians are there closest genetic cousins.
You should have a mixed-race friend send their spit into 23andMe and see what happens! When races mix, you have genetic admixture. It remains trivial to see which portions of a persons DNA comes from which part of the world because those portions contain SNPs which are only found in certain human subpopulations.
If you are the child of an African father and a European mother (like Barack Obama), you get half your chromosomes from your father and half from your mother. A few bits from each chromosome swap over, but it is not hard to unravel which bits came from Africa and which from Europe.
The government's big racial categories are somewhat inaccurate (especially hispanic, since some hispanics are European and some are Amerindian). But distinct human genetic populations are very real. Razib Khan's blog[3] is great if you want to move beyond the sound bytes and get into the real science of human population genetics. Sadly, liberal views on race tend to be extremely unscientific.
"The 'recent'-ness of common ancestry (or lack thereof) is what separates you from a Chimpanzee."
No, it's the composition of the species' genomes. If they were created in a lab yesterday the situation would be the same. Unless you believe in some kind of supernatural effect, the way homeopaths believe that water has "memory".
"we see no sickle cell disease in Europeans as we do in Africans"
There is sickle cell disease in southern Italy, and in many other parts of the world outside of Africa. It cuts across "racial" divisions, and follows the historical distribution of malaria.
You avoided the simple question about 23andMe. You claimed they would have "no problem" categorizing people as "white" or "black". So how would they categorize the child of a "white" and "black" parent?
Yes, but the US robbery rate is lower than in England, and the crime rates in many other categories are comparable [1] to what you find in the EU. Intentional homicides make up only a small fraction of all crime.
Crime tends to be more lethal in the US, not (that much) more frequent.
For various reasons, homicide is the easiest reported statistic to compare between countries. In any case, it's not robbery rates that drive the votes of scared suburbanites. Newspapers don't talk about which big city is the carjacking capital of the U.S.
No principal disagreement, but I am not sure how that relates to your original claim that "[h]omogenous countries with low levels of social dysfunction and high social cohesion have an easier time dealing with prisoners"?
The purpose of imprisonment, indeed, of the whole justice system, is to replace what would otherwise be mob justice. Of the various academic characteristics of the justice system: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, the former is arguably the most important one, or at least the one that most directly animates the existence of the justice system.
From that point of view, what is most relevant is peoples' perception of crime, and peoples' perception of the criminals, not necessarily actual crime rates. When people see sky-high murder rates, a crime that is considered the most grievous one possible and the kind of crime that becomes a focal point for the public discourse, and when they don't feel a social bond with the people convicted of crimes, they will not be satisfied by the kind of more lenient prison sentences and conditions you see in European countries.
The middle aged suburban voter is not interested in the rehabilitative aspect of the justice system, the aspect that reintegrates criminals into society, because that criminal was never part of that suburbanite's society to begin with. That voter is merely interested in retribution. At the same time, the criminal doesn't see the situation any differently. He has no faith in the institutions of society. He knows that he will never be considered a part of the broader society, so his incentive to really try to be rehabilitated vanishes. So the recidivism rate in the U.S. is double or triple that of places like Norway: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/25/277771/norway-is....
Contrast Norway: http://blog.nj.com/perspective/2011/07/crime_and_punishment_... ("As Norwegians view it, if you’re going to better yourself within a collective society, then you must work within the collective. When it comes to crime, it’s not about the individual. It’s about what — as a society — they did wrong, and what they can correct, and how they can address this politically.")
Now, to circle back to my point: what creates these attitudes? Are Norwegians just better people than Americans? I don't think that's the case. I think the root of the difference is that Americans don't think of everyone as being part of the same collective. Partly because of cultural reasons, and partly because of historical reasons. The lack of homogeneity and social cohesion is a major part of what creates the attitudes. Segregation, in particular, has left an indelible imprint on modern American society. After all, much of the country was forcibly desegregated just two generations ago. To put it bluntly, when a black (or hispanic) kid in inner-Baltimore commits a crime, the white voters in suburban Maryland don't ask themselves, like the Norwegians do, "what did society do wrong? How can we correct the problem?"
I know that the kind of non-informative comment I'm about to make is rightly discouraged, but I really can't resist. This was a supremely insightful and well-written note, and I feel I understand some things better after reading it.
I agree with this analysis, but I also think that inclusiveness is malleable.
In "Song of Myself", Walt Whitman wrote "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them". The Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about how we choose our own levels of identification and some are more morally praiseworthy than others.
So yes, the problem might well be the lack of identification between your white voters in suburban Maryland and your black kid in inner-Baltimore (and vice versa of course), but we can and do change. Society moves forwards, and we are not entirely passive actors in it.
Let's make arguments that encourage greater identification, take social steps to increase identification, etc. It may well be easier for those societies in Europe, but it's by no means easy, which your analysis seems to ignore. These attitudes have to be worked on, and reinforced.
Well, if you're on the third strike, you might as well kill the witness instead let him go, as it does not increase your sentence, but decreases your chance of being caught.
Of course, it's not the law that's solely responsible for crazy high crime rates compared to other civilized countries, nevertheless some practices used in US legal system can give a lot of incentive to minor offenders to do things they otherwise wouldn't.
That sounds like a cop out. Not least because the problems mentioned here aren't so much with the prisoners but with the political system that criminalises common behaviour, the legal system that puts non dangerous offenders in prison and the cultural attitude that abuse is warranted.
Even if it isn't a cop out, it might be better taken as a suggestion for areas to target for improvement (social dysfunction, social cohesion) than as an excuse for complacency.
Go to the south side of Chicago and try to see what sorts of cultural ties exist between the people there and the people in the rest of the city. There is a profound disconnect, and a profound lack of any sense of connection to a common community.
Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. But the sense that one group of people are not even party to the same social contract is not one that is common in Europe, though you see it among Muslim immigrants in the UK and France.
Lack of faith in social institutions breeds crime. If you're a poor teenager in Chicago deciding whether to join a gang, you do it because the gang can protect you. The police won't protect you--the police are there to protect the rest of the city from you.
And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. Even when you take away the overly long sentences and the convictions for innocuous things like mere drug possession, the US has far more crime than Denmark or Norway.
Europe is going to see it too, soon. Below replacement fertility has meant increasing immigration, faster than those people can be integrated. And then Europe too will have to deal with the "us versus them" mentality that arises in such populations.
Denmark 24.8
Norway 25
Germany 27
E.U. 30.7
India 36.8
World 39
Nigeria 43.7
United States 45
Mozambique 45.6
The biggest underlying problem with the US prison (educational, healthcare, etc.) system is that the US economic system is actively maintained to increase the concentration of wealth and the degree to which Americans don't share a common set of interests.
But, still, such broader social problems aren't the only big problems in the prison or other systems, and even though they need to be fixed, there are big steps that can be taken short of fixing them to deal with other real problems in each of those systems.
> And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior.
Ending drug prohibition would do quite a lot of to mitigate the problem with prisons, even though it wouldn't deal with the biggest underlying problem.
> The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes.
No, but there'd be a lot less broken homes for them to come from if it weren't lots of resources being poored into non-violent offenders being put away for victimless crimes, and there'd be a lot more resources for the kinds of interventions that would stop people from ending up in gangs in the first places.
> That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable.
What makes the problem deeply intractable is people throwing up their hands and saying that the problem is too hard to deal with. (And, mostly, people seeing their own short-term self-interest being in not dealing with the problem.)
"Go to the south side of Chicago"... That makes me laugh, I now live near Guadalajara, Mexico and it's safer here, even with cartel violence, than in Chicago.
My first reaction, as someone who loves the city and lived there for several years, was: don't let the statistics dissuade you from visiting; the areas on the north side where you would go are quite safe. And therein is the problem, isn't it.
I believe it has been shown that for similar cities, the U.S. system is worse - I think I saw an example of an U.S. and a Canadian city across the border, similar demographics, the U.S. one had 10 times the crime rate, etc..
Just to play devil's advocate, are you positive you'd have the same view if someone murdered your spouse? Sexually assaulted your daughter? Beat the hell out of your mother?
This is exactly why society as a whole gets to decide instead of the victim or relatives of the victim. It's human that harm done to you or a close person is hard to forgive, but societies goals differ from the goals of the individual: The individuals goal is revenge, the societies goal is to keep the crime rate low. Part of that is betterment of offenders since it keeps the rate of recidivism lower, thus creates less future victims. It's certainly unfortunate that the two goals are not perfectly aligned. However, given human behaviour as it is your question is misleading the discussion: The answer is probably "no" and still, society should choose a different way.
Yes, we completely agree. My point isn't that society should look to punish people instead of rehabilitate them. It's that it is human nature to want to punish people, and it takes a special kind of person to see past that and do what is best for society. The average highly-educated, often idealist member of our little community may be able to do it, but I have no faith that a random American would.
But surely their should be some dis-incentive for committing a crime?
Supposing their existed a "rehabilitation pill" and taking it instantly prevented someone from committing the same crime again. What if someone then killed your child or partner? Would you be happy for them to take the tablet and be immediately released?
You're misreading my statement. Part of the solution is betterment, but it's by far not the only part. The second major goal of prison is punishment (nb: not revenge), effectively deterrent. However, the punishment must be adequate to the crime committed and human. Making prison as cruel as possible does not serve that goal. The punishment consists in loosing your freedom, not in getting raped or tortured.
Btw: In such a future you're describing we surely have ways of preventing crimes just as effective as the pill that turns a murderer into a good member of society.
Some people here seem to be arguing there is no place for punishment at all. I think there is, but humane punishment. Not dumping people into a human shark tank.
Maybe. Maybe not. If any of those things did happen I most likely wouldn't be thinking logically, so I'm not sure how much weight my opinion should carry. My thought process right now is that it does absolutely no good treating prisoners inhumane. As soon as they get out and they can't find a job because they have a criminal record and no current job experience they will turn directly back to crime. Now we have to waste money and resources on them again. Not to mention that they could cause more harm to other people. It really does no one any good.
But you do know why this is a terrible point, right?
This is exactly why we have courts; to deliver justice over vengeance, having proven guilt.
Victims and offenders are extremes. Victims want maximum sentencing for vengeance and punishment, offenders want maximum mercy. Neither is likely to be fair to the other. Courts are there to moderate and hand out fair rulings based on societies agreed laws. (yes I know many have problems with laws, but thats a totally different discussion)
Your point relies on the notion that because as a victim we would want maximum punishment for vengeance, that is how the law and justice system should be. Well, no, it is the exact opposite. You must have heard the opposite argument : What if you and your family were starving, would you steal to eat? Would you kill to steal so that your child might eat? Exact same logic, just opposite. Now we can argue for a very lenient justice system, right? Well, the justice system sits squarely int he middle of both. Its must give out fair punishment. Its must be fair to BOTH sides.
This type of point is as bad and manipulative as the "what have you got to hide" routine. IMHO, its an abuse of language and the people its used against. It is politician talk.
And to play angels advocate, are you positive you'd have the same view if your spouse murdered someone? Your daughter sexually assaulted someone? Your mother beat the hell out of someone?
Are you American? If so, the majority of your Congressional representatives have (or at least espouse) this mentality, which is both overtly and subtly reinforced by the money they receive from the industrial prison lobby.
For those that don't know, US is the only country in the world where there are much more reports of male victim rapes than female victim rapes, most of those rapes in prison.
Not just prison rape, but torture in the form of solitary confinement and outright slavery. The 13th Amendment only outlaws involuntary servitude for non-criminals.
There is the same 'cultural acceptance' of prison rape as there is a Latvian acceptance of having 'no potato, only misery'.
Congress ordered studies to be started years ago and updated periodically to determine what's really going on... somehow I suspect you've not seen even a single one of the resultant studies though.
I have looked at the official studies some time ago.
The most recent investigation I looked at was
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html which, based on academic studies suggest that 22% of male prisoners have been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated.
That report also noted that official figures often massively under-report incidence of abuse.
Anyway, you only have to watch US comedies, including those aimed at young people to see that prison rape is considered a joke, and a tame one at that. That's what I mean by 'cultural acceptance'.
If a thing exists, and is widespread, and you keep subjecting people to the environment in which it occurs without making substantial efforts to stop it from occurring, it demonstrates acceptance.
And if those circumstances and the fact that the government isd doing that is widely known by the public and there is no substantial political demand for change of government action, that demonstrates public acceptance, as well.
Problem is that doesn't happen as much as you hope it happens. Someone needs to stop believing everything they see in TV and movies and using them as a crux for shitting on America.
Even though it seems that in this particular there is no extradition, it's somewhat concerning that there are so many countries that would extradit their citizens to a foreign country, although those citizens might have never visited this country (Gary McKinnon is another example). My home country has a policy to never extradit its own citizens and up until now I assumed that this is the norm for most countries. ("never extradit" means that you can still go to jail if you're doing something that's illegal in the foreign country and in your home country. But in that case you are sentenced by a local judge and put into a local jail.)
"Own nationals: Some countries, such as Brazil,[6] the Czech Republic,[7] France,[8][9] Germany,[10] Japan,[11] the People's Republic of China,[12] the Republic of China (Taiwan)[13] forbid extradition of their own nationals. These countries often have laws in place that give them jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by or against citizens. By virtue of such jurisdiction, they prosecute and try citizens accused of crimes committed abroad as if the crime had occurred within the country's borders (see e.g. trial of Xiao Zhen)."
The problems will be solved through education and giving people a second chance. I mean a real second chance.
US Justice has turned into a self promotion race through populism by exagerating charges and sentenses. Trials and jailing has turned into a business. Education loans has led to restore slavery.
US once considered the example of liberty, free speach and enterpreneurship is now subject to the consequences of extremas in all fields. Thanks to lobbying and subversion of regulating institutions.
Russia has crumbled under the weight of it's central administrative policy, US starts to crumble under the pressure of people's greediness and disabling of regulating structures as well as loss of sense of morale.
"Education loans has led to restore[sic] slavery" is one of the most hyperbolic comments I have read on HN. I don't agree that giving students credit secured by future income is equivalent to forcibly converting a free human into the property of another.
For the past 4 years, I mostly worked on what I could, not what I really wanted...
Happily, sometimes there was a overlap, but how it is not slavery?
I cannot quit.
I cannot choose what I will work with (mostly, every time I was without a job, I had to accept whatever offer came by, the few times I tried to be picky I ended even more indebted to buy food).
I cannot live where I want...
And so on.
With some employers, I did feel owned, because even if they did not knew I was in deep debt, they could push me to do whatever they wanted, just with a small treat of dismissal, because I CANNOT afford be dismissed, my debt payment is way above the country average wage, and for the last years I've been living reaching the end of each month slighly indebted or with a zero balance in the bank.
I dread the day I suffer some accident, near my home people ignore the red light a lot, and I think if I ever get hit by a car, I don't have money to pay medical expenses. (my parents are also in debt, partly by their incredible education expense they had with me, sometimes taking loans they knew they could not pay just to pay for my schooling).
Right now I am co-founder in a startup, and every time our cash starts to run low, conflicts flare up quickly, because the pressure becomes immense, it generates lots of instability, and I already lost two relationships over this (ie: not over having a startup, but having those debts and financial instability and extreme dependance on employers).
I am from Brazil, there is no personal bankrupcty.
Also, your debts are inherited, mandatorily, specially if you have spouse, kids, or parents (in the order. if you die, your spouse will get at least 50% of your debts, if you don't have one, then your kids will be forced to take at least 50% of your debts, if you don't have kids, then your parents... the other 50% must be inherited by someone too, but you can choose with your will who will be the unlucky person).
And because a side effect of inheritance laws, the government can (although I never heard about it doing it) give your debts to a third cousin even.
Also, another thing is that here in Brazil student debts commonly have as collateral the assets of a third party (in fact all sorts of debts here work that way, except for companies), so if I DO fail to pay my debt, then it will pass to my parents, that are already indebted and will certainly fail to pay it, then their stuff will be taken (and I don't have anything to be taken, my 3 most valuable assets are my laptop, my phone, and my glasses).
EDIT to joseflavio: Your link is about law in Portugual, not Brazil, note the currency mentioned is Euro, not Reais.
EDIT2 to joseflavio: I got curious enough, to see if there is anything analogous in Brazil, and indeed there is, by another name "renuncia".
The law (I will skip the non-interesting part) about "renuncia":
Art. 1.807. O interessado em que o herdeiro declare se aceita, ou não, a herança, poderá, vinte dias após aberta a sucessão, requerer ao juiz prazo razoável, não maior de trinta dias, para, nele, se pronunciar o herdeiro, sob pena de se haver a herança por aceita.
Art. 1.812. São irrevogáveis os atos de aceitação ou de renúncia da herança.
Art. 1.813. Quando o herdeiro prejudicar os seus credores, renunciando à herança, poderão eles, com autorização do juiz, aceitá-la em nome do renunciante.
§ 1o A habilitação dos credores se fará no prazo de trinta dias seguintes ao conhecimento do fato.
§ 2o Pagas as dívidas do renunciante, prevalece a renúncia quanto ao remanescente, que será devolvido aos demais herdeiros.
Thus in short: You have 20 days to renounce your inheritance.
If your are inheriting debts and renounce your inheritance, your creditors can sue to force you still inherit the debt and pay them, and after the debt is paid, the "good" parts of the inheritance get successfully renounced and go to someone else, thus attempting to renounce a debt only results in punishment, since you still get the debt, but DON'T get the good parts of the inheritance.
This must make it so much more difficult for the the poor to ever escape their condition. I suppose it's common for an entire family tree to just tell lenders to take a hike, but then their only way to borrow money is through the black market, and there must be vanishingly few legitimate business opportunities were a person would feel confident that they could make enough money to pay loan-shark rates.
I'm sure this policy is detrimental to class mobility and entrepreneurship, but I'd be interested to know if it even promotes a more profitable loan market than in countries with legal bankruptcy.
Banks here are breaking their own profit record for several years in a row, while the economy is almost in recession (last year 0.9% in growth, inflation currently 6.7%, also credit card rate is around 450% year.
Last time I had to take a loan with the bank (instead of temporary negative balance) I paid 100% on a 6 month loan.
The negative balance pays 10%/mo of your current balance (thus if you never repays it, you get a rate of 300% year)
EDIT: "what do you think?" is a real question, I don't have data on other countries to know how much loan banks profit there.
This analysis is wrong. One inherits the debts, but only up to the value of the assets inherited. See Art. 1.792
Art. 1.792. O herdeiro não responde por encargos superiores às forças da herança; incumbe-lhe, porém, a prova do excesso, salvo se houver inventário que a escuse, demostrando o valor dos bens herdados.
Free translation:
Section 1792. The heir is not liable for charges greater than the forces of inheritance: it must, however, provide evidence of excess, unless there is inventory to excuse himself, demonstrating the value of inherited assets.
Although you must still prove yourself that the debt exceeds the assets, this can get very problematic in some cases (like I guy I know that AFTER he died, people found out that beside his official wife and his 2 previous divorced wives, he also had 5 other "marriages", and the 7 women did not knew each other, he had children with all of them, and each one thought he owned a different business... this case is still in inventary hell, but last I heard of it, they concluded each child will inherit 10 million BRL each plus lands... but they don't started yet counting the debts... also, all of the women were correct, he never lied about what he owned, only he never presented anyone with the full truth, to each one he presented himself owning a different business he really owned, I wonder how the guy pulled that off)
Wow... My father is a civil lawyer and deals with inventories regularly, but I don't think he's ever gotten a case so contrived. And I fully agree that having to prove the debt exceeds the assets is a major annoyance. Anything that puts the brazilian justice system in your back (especially in this case where the burden of proof is inverted), is a nightmare.
I am no lawyer... but I think it doesn't work exactly this way. You just inherit the debts if you decide to accept the inheritance (you have the option to just repudiate it).
I live in France, and as far as I know, it works the same way. In Brazil your main residence is even protected (if you live on it)... only my 2c, but in in my opinion, US is still the scariest.
Your link is about law in Portugual, not Brazil, note the currency mentioned is Euro, not Reais.
But I got curious enough, to see if there is anything analogous in Brazil, and indeed there is, by another name "renuncia".
The law (I will skip the non-interesting part) about "renuncia":
Art. 1.807. O interessado em que o herdeiro declare se aceita, ou não, a herança, poderá, vinte dias após aberta a sucessão, requerer ao juiz prazo razoável, não maior de trinta dias, para, nele, se pronunciar o herdeiro, sob pena de se haver a herança por aceita.
Art. 1.812. São irrevogáveis os atos de aceitação ou de renúncia da herança.
Art. 1.813. Quando o herdeiro prejudicar os seus credores, renunciando à herança, poderão eles, com autorização do juiz, aceitá-la em nome do renunciante.
§ 1o A habilitação dos credores se fará no prazo de trinta dias seguintes ao conhecimento do fato.
§ 2o Pagas as dívidas do renunciante, prevalece a renúncia quanto ao remanescente, que será devolvido aos demais herdeiros.
Thus in short:
You have 20 days to renounce your inheritance.
If your are inheriting debts and renounce your inheritance, your creditors can sue to force you still inherit the debt and pay them, and after the debt is paid, the "good" parts of the inheritance get successfully renounced and go to someone else, thus attempting to renounce a debt only results in punishment, since you still get the debt, but DON'T get the good parts of the inheritance.
Yeah, it's going to take a lot more than debt to come anywhere near equalling slavery.
But in fairness, let's note that declaring bankruptcy does not nullify student loans, so it is somewhat like an indentured servitude once you've got them.
This is one of the few times I am with the US point of view. Stealing thousand of bank accounts isn't a small crime. If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? If one person commited suicide, or lost his house, etc due to a theft caused by these guys, is it ok?
He isn't a teenager who downloaded a song, he isn't a security researcher who was just playing around, he isn't a whistleblower who wanted to protect our privacy by informing us, they didn't ran a service to help oppressed people reach out; they are bank robbers, top notch bank robbers if they compromised so many accounts.
This is a fair counter point, but there's very little short of capital crimes that truly (IMO) warrants a pseudo-life sentence in a US max prison. The conditions are horrific by the standards of developing nations, to say nothing of other developed countries.
The fact that our legal system routinely doles out punishments that are not in proportion to the crime is quite reason enough to deny extradition.
How many bank officials that were responsible for even more losses are serving their 67 years in prison?
Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.
I am totally for jail time for bankers. But saying money is just money, isn't true.
Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity.
In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life.
Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
I'm not saying theft is not at all harmful. Only that it's not so serious as killing. When you have money stolen form your bank account case is usually more complicated. This is a failure of bank security and sometimes banks take or are forced to take responsibility. So often the victims of theft don't suffer more than a bit of inconvenience and the real victim left is the bank or insurance companies, and they are only victims of risk that is inherent to their business. Of course they pass cost of this risk to all of their customers so you might argue that they are harmed. But they could pick bank that deals better with the risks. But the banks that deal better with the risk could also have higher prices just because their competition has higher prices, so, some win, some loose. Money unfairly changes hands, but nothing was actually lost apart from effects of emotional turmoil. Just some money was transferd to people that have larger tolerance for risk than typical worker/consumer.
Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio.
I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.
If I found my bank account empty I would rather that the thief got away without punishment than sending the thief to jail for 67 years.
I suspect many if not most of the victims would feel the same. There is a real consideration to make to victims who don't want to be part of or reason for any cruel punishments.
Most people - especially in America these days - live in tenuous circumstances, and "[finding] my bank account empty" would quite literally ruin their lives. For most people, that would be many times the provocation needed for them to feel justified in ruining a thief's life in exchange.
You realize of course that bank accounts are insured?
Editing bec I can't reply somehow:
The case you have was "tenuous circumstances"
I myself have experienced having my account cleaned out of a couple of thousand dollars (stolen/compromised ATM), and the bank had my funds back in 3 days. Pretty sure I won't be ruined in that time frame. Anybody who has 250k in the bank isn't living in tenuous Circumstances.
FDIC requires the government to pay you back for the insured (250k) amount but sets no timetable for this repayment. Simply, "as soon as possible." I've had several attorneys (that's what I get for marrying one) tell me explicitly that although the official FDIC policy is "as soon as possible" - which, granted, if you're a single point of failure (i.e., a small local bank) can be as soon as a few days - can be extended effectively indefinitely in cases where, for instance, a major bank fails, or several major banks are robbed concurrently.
Granted, you could sue for this, since you could argue that perhaps they're not moving as fast as they can be, but at that point you're not going to have the money to sue them with.
Now, if you have a solid job and money across several accounts under banks that are orthogonal with respect to being swindled, hey, you're OK. You'll hold out for the eventual repayment. If, on the other hand, you're in the same situation as most Americans these days, you had better hope that when you need the FDIC you're one of the exceptional few rather than part of a mob, because you could very well see your life derailed before you get your safety net back.
It's just money. It would set the victims back (if the bank doesn't cover) but if they live in the first world and their life is ruined just because they lost all their money, they need perspective. They would still have all that really matters: family, food, shelter, access to education and healthcare, job, no physical injuries. It's just money.
In the US, all of those things require money. It cost $10-20k to have our baby, food certainly isn't free and food stamps aren't enough to more than subsist in poor nutrition, we pay $15k year for healthcare that covers just me and the baby, I can't get to work without gas money, etc.
If someone didn't have family to fall back in, an empty bank account would literally ruin the life of the average American.
Where I live in Europe (Bulgaria), the situation isn't that different from what it is in the US (I used to live in NYC with a baby and health care expenses similar to what you mention).
Here, the banks offer very limited credits, expecially to foreigners like me. Public health care and education is not great, to put it nicely. My family depends on my income but a bankruptcy would mean that I would lose my license to practise my profession, and so too my income would take a dip.
So, losing cash could mean that I would loose my profession, my home, car etc. There would be no more nice kindergartens, no nanny, no cleaning lady or private doctors for a long while. We would eat less, drink less, travel less etc. But that doesn't mean that my life would be ruined.
You would eat less, drink less, travel less. Americans that get cleaned out could easily end up without anything to eat, or drink, or (hah) travel. According to feedamerica.org, 16.1% of Americans (as of 2011) already live in food-insecure households. 15% live in poverty. If you're impoverished and being helped by the state - i.e., Social Security - your aid checks are going to be direct-deposited into that swindled / frozen-while-we're-fixing-things account. When you're living on a pittance, you know how rough it is to not have that pittance for a month or three?
You're talking about eating less. You're talking about still being able to travel. I'm talking about a country where roughly one-sixth of its population would literally starve if this happened to them.
> They would still have all that really matters: family, food, shelter, access to education and healthcare, job, no physical injuries
The first 4 you mention do not magically come for free in the U.S. You might retain the 5th, if you already had a job, and though you were nice enough to mention 'no physical injury' you somehow neglected 'no psychological injury'... though I can see why, since it would be untrue.
All of these things require money in the US. Supporting your family (feeding them, housing them, sheltering them, educating them, providing them medicine). Money in the US is not just for purchasing luxuries: it is a necessary resource for survival. Either you're not an American, or you're hopelessly priveleged.
1) If you're in poverty (15% of Americans) your checks from the gov't are direct-deposit. Getting swindled not only catches whatever salary was currently in the account, and racks up penalties for whichever bills you currently just didn't pay, but it takes time to get your direct deposit redirected to another account (and open a new account). Those bounced checks during the time you got swindled? That can be enough to bar you from opening a new account, which is part of why "Check Cashing" stores thrive in low-income areas.
2) If you're not in poverty, and your employer direct-deposits, all of the above, only you can change your direct deposit destination faster.
According to the article, one of the suspects faces 95 years in prison. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder in Virginia, for example, is 40 years.
You could argue that e.g. 5 years is not enough. But I think it would be hard to argue against the idea that 95 years is far too much, when it's twice as much as the maximum you can get for deliberately killing a person in my home state, as long as you didn't plan the killing in advance.
That is 40 years for a single crime. These individuals are charged with multiple crimes. Hence, the theoretical maximum increases significantly. However, in practice sentences for multiple crimes are either imposed concurrently or, if imposed sequentially, are substantially reduced to be more reasonable (but not necessarily completely fair) when compared to other felonies.
Unless you can convince me that those multiple crimes are worth more than twice the sentence you get for murdering somebody, I don't really see why it matters.
I understand that he's facing 95 years because the sentences potentially add together. Well, that's part of the problem.
The sentences potentially add together as much as a bullet may potentially self-fire. This is the same thing we saw with Aaron Swartz's case, the media and prosecution want a number to describe the seriousness of the charges and so they add together the individual maximums of all of the individual charges, despite that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines would not actually call for consecutive sentences here (unless perhaps I'm missing some aggravating circumstances).
American prosecutors want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to threaten people with "95 years in prison!" But at the same time they want to show that they don't punish people with undue harshness.
Is a foreign country supposed to ignore the maximum penalty an extradition candidate faces, and go with the particulars of how the US justice system usually works, especially when prosecutors will happily threaten people with the theoretical maximum whenever it suits them?
> American prosecutors want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to threaten people with "95 years in prison!"
Unless you're of the opinion that public defenders and defense lawyers are simpletons who can barely figure out how to breathe, it doesn't matter what the prosecution tries to say to the accused.
You can say it's all for show as part of a "trial by media", but defense attorneys are just as eager to do that, and such a thing has no bearing on the legal process anyways.
Foreign countries should worried about the maximum conceivable penalty (which is even higher than plausible, but still much lower than the theoretically possible).
The main purpose of the threats is to convince defendants to plea bargain, and it serves this purpose extremely well. Roughly 90% of American defendants accept a plea bargain, and many of them are innocent.
These threats matter a lot. I mean, unless you're of the opinion that prosecutors are simpletons who can barely figure out how to breathe, they must serve some purpose given that they keep being made!
Prosecutors want to use massive potential sentences to browbeat defendants into waiving their right to a trial. But, surprise! Some people take you at your word, and make other decisions based on threats like that.
Again: the fact that the massive potential sentence isn't realistic is a bug, not a feature, in the US system.
Again though, the defendant's own lawyer is able to instruct his or her client on the actual potential sentence that the defendant is likely to face. It is not a number that can be calculated a priori as it depends highly on the charges for which a conviction is actually obtained, what types of evidence survive (or don't survive) the trial process, and way more factors than can be encompassed in a straight scalar value.
That imprecision in sentencing certainly annoys the technical minded, but it is a feature compared to what happened before, where you sentence depended much more on the judge you were assigned and how the judge felt that day, than on what you were actually convicted of.
Certainly most defendants do plea bargain, but you have provided no explanation why the reason plea bargains occur is related to the maximum sentence quoted for a press release. It is, I would say, just as likely that the reason people take the plea is that even the realistic sentence under the Federal sentencing guidelines, as explained by the defense counsel, is still harsh enough that the plea bargain represents a better deal than playing the acquittal lottery.
Obviously the prosecutor will point out that the maximum theoretical sentence is something completely different, that's their job in the adversarial legal system. If it helps in securing a conviction it's mission accomplished. Likewise it is the job of the defense to explain that the likely sentence is something way different, that a given plea bargain is a joke, that evidence can be thrown out in court, and that entire cases can be thrown out on technicalities.
I'm not sure why you would feel better if defendants went through a kangaroo court where justice is dispensed within days and the convicted are forgotten just as quickly, but I certainly don't see how that would lead to any decrease in wrongful convictions.
Someday we'll give up on this war on drugs, and that will help with the backlog, but even then plea bargains will be more beneficial than harmful to defendants.
"I'm not sure why you would feel better if defendants went through a kangaroo court where justice is dispensed within days and the convicted are forgotten just as quickly, but I certainly don't see how that would lead to any decrease in wrongful convictions."
What the hell? Where did I express a preference for anything like this?
If the US were to apply this same principle to our bankers and white collar criminals then we might have a leg to stand on. As it is, this isn't an argument the government of the United States can make in good faith.
> If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit?
Yes I would. Anything more would be completely disproportionate and not constructive. 5 years is a very severe sentence for a non-violent crime by someone who is not an acute threat to the safety of others.
I don't have any thirst for medieval revenge. I would be more interested in ways to get my money back.
And I would not want to be in any way responsible for the culprit to suffer the human rights abuse of the American prison system. If it were up to me, my country would never, ever extradite to the US.
Personally I have come around to the view that purely financial crimes should merit only financial punishments, of a sufficient magnitude to deter the crime.
I'd like to think that I would be rational enough to maintain that position even if I was the victim of such a crime.
The trouble is that I'm not sure there is a sufficient magnitude to deter all financial crimes.
There's an inherent limit to how much financial punishment you can mete out, after all. You can permanently impoverish a person, and that's it. Many people are already permanently impoverished, in which case a financial crime would basically be no risk, with a large potential reward if they can get away with it.
Edit: "deter all financial crimes" is poor wording. Of course you can't deter all crimes, and as such that shouldn't be a goal. What I'm really trying to get at is that such a punishment system would give you a large number of people for whom it's not really a punishment at all, or at least not a very significant one.
take it away and give her some prison time, in this case. The problem is, of course, that in the prison she will be taught how to steal professionally, so an ideal rehabilitative prison should prevent any contact between inmates.
I would be okay with a maximum sentence of five years.
I believe it's important to consider prison as rehabilitation, not as vengeance. The tone of your consideration makes it clear that you'd want him in jail only for vengeance - it's not up to you to "be okay" with the offender's sentence. All that matters is that it is appropriate.
Depending on the prison, I would be okay with a criminal spending only five years for every degree of murder save for first degree.
I can assure you, you'll get over your bank account being empty. Yes, I know, you could lose a substantial amount of money. But there is insurance for these sorts of things (despite it not being foolproof), and I don't think you fully consider how five years of prison can change you.
1) You're nitpicking. Look at my entire argument, then come back to me with a rebuttal of my point, not a sentence.
2) It's not my responsibility to right crimes. However, what I do have an opinion on is not calling criminals scumbags for committing white collar crimes. I get lives can be ruined, yes. But you effectively crucify them and remove all context from the crime by just looking at them, sneering and judging them as worthless human beings.
My second point is not meant to imply I'm a feel-good hippie who encourages free love and understanding. They are at fault for what they did. However, they are also a product of their environment(s), and retribution is groundless. Rehabilitation is both more generous and productive for all parties included.
I don't think you should have more than five years for physically robbing a bank (assuming that's the only charge against you) either. Again, that's just my opinion. But I'm being consistent - whether or not it happened online is meaningless to me.
If you read the context of my comment (it being a reply to another comment), I think it would be more clear that I'm not minimizing physical bank robberies. It's more about me not lessening the sentence for cyber crime.
Small nitpick - many bank robberies are initiated and concluded just by passing a note to the teller without any overt threats, and without having any weapons on them. If they're savvy, they'll even ask for the money to be laid on the table to avoid the dye packs.
The popular portrayal of a bank robbery is dramatic but outdated.
I imagine that it's still a very threatening experience for teller. Much worse than logging on to a computer and discovering that there are money missing.
While this has indeed been the case so far, it's important to point out that the final decision is scheduled to be made by the Cabinet of Ministers tomorrow (Tuesday).
Anybody thinking this is the new slave labor or is it just me?
Need more workers? Introduce stricter laws.
Given the mess the American legal system is just about anybody can be sentenced for something so the only question is how many slaves/criminals do we need?
1) local prosecution claims that there aren't any grounds to prosecute on ~half of claims that USA wants to charge;
2) defense lawyers claim and popular sentiment (including politicians) believe that USA doesn't have a just/fair court system for computer related crimes;
3) there is a strong position for local jurisdiction in crimes in "cyberspace" - if some action is legal locally, then people shouldn't care if it's illegal in USA; if some crime carries max penalty of 5 years, as is here for computer fraud; then extraditing him for charges of the USA requested 67 years - essentially life sentence - is unacceptable.