7 ms·

Honestly I'm not very keen on pinning blame/monetary responsibility on single individuals/companies to 'prevent/deter' unknown future crimes. We shouldn't be si

Honestly I'm not very keen on pinning blame/monetary responsibility on single individuals/companies to 'prevent/deter' unknown future crimes. We shouldn't be signaling with big punishments bigger than the crimes call for. We should carefully consider the crime based on the individual and how much punishment is appropriate for that individual to compensate the victim/deter that single individual/company from continuing that future behavior. Not to stop others. Why should I get 30 years for a crime that should be 5 years because they want to send a signal. Make it fair and make it equal. Edit: Apparently this is a unpopular opinion. All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Not meets the crime and exceeds it in order to prevent unrelated parties from committing the same crime. They aren't my responsibility.

unwise-exe 4y ago
> We should carefully consider the crime based on the individual and how much punishment is appropriate for that individual to compensate the victim/deter that single individual/company from continuing that future behavior. Not to stop others. I'd think that having your standard practice be to make sure it wasn't worth it would find the same amount as the threshhold for both deterring the current perpetrator and deterring others.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  There's a clear difference between deterring a individual and putting a amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught. It's all about intentions. And I don't want my government prosecuting people and giving them high sentences just to deter other people. It's barbaric behavior. Like cutting the hand off a thief so others know what will happen if they get caught stealing.
  - unwise-exe 4y ago
    > amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them That's not how it works, it's about getting the accountants or lawyers or whoever to tell that person's boss "this can be expected to cost us $XXXX".
    - lajamerr 4y ago
      Lawyers are sophisticated bunch they know these amounts will garner taglines. Do you honestly believe that these lawyers/judges don't incorporate public perception into their accounts of what they think a fitting punishment is and use them as a way to lead public policy/deterrence for particular crimes?
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    > And I don't want my government prosecuting people and giving them high sentences just to deter other people. Deterrence is the whole point of punishing crime. Every society in human history has done this. It's not "barbaric," what's "barbaric" is allowing criminals to do horrible things to innocent people without any incentive against it.
    - lajamerr 4y ago
      Deterrence for the individual is fine only if it's made with sole intention/consideration of that individual. Additional punishment added on to deter unrelated future parties is not fine. I am not responsible for the future people and their actions.
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    > There's a clear difference between deterring a individual and putting a amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught. That difference is not clear to me. What sort of deterrence to an individual would not also lead others to think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught? - or, to consider the contrapositive, if it does not invoke that thought in others, why would the convicted be deterred from trying again? The fact that they were caught once does not mean they will be next time. Furthermore, I dispute the idea that deterring people from committing a harmful act, before that harm is done, is not a justifiable goal for a society (note that this does not imply that I must therefore endorse the cutting off of thieves' hands.) Quite often, the perpetrator cannot compensate fully for the harm done, and it is always better if it were not done in the first place. We should note that what is being deterred here is Oberlin's decision to fight the case rather than accept its obvious responsibility and compensate the plaintiffs for the damage it did. Personally, I think this is a net benefit to society, and if it makes entities in similar situations think twice, so much the better.
xyzzyz 4y ago
Why would we not want to stop others? Why not consider a positive side effect of deterring others? Sorry, what are you saying here does not make any sense to me at all. It seems like that you are suggesting that we could simply not punish people at all for first offense, as long as they can credibly promise that they won’t reoffend. After all, if they won’t reoffend, under what you say, there is no point in punishing them at all. Sure, this means that people will know that they can scot-free offend one time, and so many more will likely do, especially if the risk of being caught is relatively low, but you explicitly want to ignore that. This is crazy to me. No society ever worked like that. Additionally, deterrence function is not “virtue signaling”, this is not what the term means.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  Why should my punishment be more severe because you want to stop others from doing something in the future? That's a disproportionate amount of punishment for the individual. Punishment should be equal to the crime, not have an additional component to be used to deter others who I have no affiliation with. Public prosecution is absolutely terrible way to deal with dealing out punishment. Not all individuals are the same, not all crimes are the same, but once you are given a guilty verdict judges are expected to give out sentencing guidelines that match similar tag lines/crimes regardless of circumstances. Punishment should be more personalized and should be a performance improvement plan based on the individual and how they respond to the effective plan/action.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    I can only say that I thoroughly disagree with this, and I have every single society that has ever existed behind me.
    - lajamerr 4y ago
      So you should be punished for a crime for more than the harm/compensation/individual deterrence, just so that you can stop future crimes by unrelated people by you being a peg that others can consider if they might commit a similar crime? I really ask you to consider this from a moral standpoint. Society isn't always right. Sometimes society just does things because it's easier, not because it's right.
soared 4y ago
By your logic rich organizations can purposefully commit crimes against small businesses knowing the fines will be incredibly small.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with big punishments if it meets the crimes. But I shouldn't have disproportionate punishment so that my case can be used as taglines/references on "you could get this huge big punishment so don't do it."
kansface 4y ago
Because we need incentives so that egregiously bad, intentional behavior doesn’t become a business decision for the rich.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  Punish those individuals when the time comes, punish them for the equal amount of crime they caused. Don't add additional punishment in order to add a deterrence for others. You should not punish people to stop the future actions of unrelated people by giving certain ones bigger punishments than meets the crime.
chrismcb 4y ago
When a single individual/company intentionally dors something bad why not pin it on them? The payment should be more than just making the victim whole. And it should be enough to make sure the aggressor doesn't do it again. At the same time that should also be a deterrent to others.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  I agree with everything you said except the last sentence. Why should the punishment for the crime be increased to be used as a deterrent for others? Add a deterrence but only make the deterrence with the intention/scope of the individual who committed the crime. Don't add a deterrence with the intention of stopping other unrelated parties. That is an unfair assessment of my individual crime and the harm that I caused. That is an unequal punishment/consideration that shouldn't be included in the process.
gnicholas 4y ago
The magnitude of punitive damages is not to deter others. It's to deter the responsible party. They are calibrated to be large enough to catch the attention of the party being held responsible. If they were meant to deter others, they would be pegged to the size of other potential wrongdoers. But they are not. They are pegged to the size of the actual wrongdoer.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  And size is already calculated in with the idea of deterring others based on sentencing guidelines.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Sentencing guidelines are for criminal convictions. This was a civil case. There are also no punitive damages in criminal convictions. This area of law is a bit nuanced, and the details matter. In the US, criminal punishments are not ratcheted up based on your wealth. I believe there are some Nordic countries where this is done, with traffic violations at least.
ALittleLight 4y ago
This seems like an insane opinion to me. The college is extremely wealthy and made a considered choice to repeatedly slander a small business and attempt to bankrupt it. The college acted like a malevolent psychopath, not in the heat of the moment or at the end of some escalatory chain, but after plenty of time to consider and deliberate. The punishment must be a large dollar figure because the college is so rich - if it were small then it would not punish the college. As is, the punishment is much too small.
- lajamerr 4y ago
  I have no opinion on whether this particular college punishment is equal to the crime. I was responding to that one poster on the merits of punishing more significantly for crimes to deter other unrelated future people who may or may not commit similar crimes.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> Edit: Apparently this is a unpopular opinion. All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Have you heard of "treble damages"? I think treble damages are easily within the realm of fitting the crime. And the full $30M before interest is less than 3x the $11.5M in combined bakery and legal losses. Also, you have to factor in the chance of getting punished. If a parking meter had a fifty cent fine for not paying, nobody would ever pay.
Kadin 4y ago
> All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Not meets the crime and exceeds it in order to prevent unrelated parties from committing the same crime. That doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole point of the criminal-justice system is to attempt to deter criminal behavior. It's practically definitional. Although the systems have often been merged in recent times, many places (including some parts of the US) had two entirely separate court systems: a "court of law" for the enforcement of laws by the government, and the imposition of punitive sanctions to discourage behaviors by making them unprofitable to engage in, and "courts of equity" wherein individuals could bring suits directly against each other and where the judges had broad discretion to impose various remedies (e.g. specific performance). An example would be if your neighbor stole one of your cows: the government (often in the form of a sheriff or magistrate or similar) could decide to go after them in a court of law, because having people stealing each others' livestock is socially corrosive, hence why it's illegal. But you as the owner of the cow could petition a court of equity for relief, independently of the government's decision to pursue action in a court of law. The court of equity's remedy might basically be "give back the cow", or if they had already eaten the cow, maybe they'd tell them to give you an equivalent cow instead. There are a few US states that still maintain these dual systems: Delaware is the most well-known one, and its Court of Chancery deals with lots of contract disputes and such between private parties. Tennessee and a few other states are similar. AFAICT the existence of courts of law (or their equivalents) are almost universal features of complex civilizations and probably governments generally. If there's no punishment for breaking the law, you don't have laws, merely polite suggestions.
kipchak 4y ago
The four traditional functions of criminal punishment are Retribution (an eye for an eye, or the punishment meeting the crime) Deterrence (for fear of punishment, people do not commit crimes), Rehabilitation (correcting the behavior), and Incapacitation (someone in jail cannot commit crimes). One downside to retribution only is that the odds of being caught for a crime are less than 100%, so someone stands to gain more than they stand to lose by breaking the crime. For example if the punishment for tax perjury was commensurate with my ill gotten gains, I wouldn't have any reason outside of a personal moral framework not to lie. But if instead I can go to prison for 3 years, a good chance to save a fair chunk of money is much less attractive.

unwise-exe 4y ago

> We should carefully consider the crime based on the individual and how much punishment is appropriate for that individual to compensate the victim/deter that single individual/company from continuing that future behavior. Not to stop others. I'd think that having your standard practice be to make sure it wasn't worth it would find the same amount as the threshhold for both deterring the current perpetrator and deterring others.

lajamerr 4y ago
There's a clear difference between deterring a individual and putting a amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught. It's all about intentions. And I don't want my government prosecuting people and giving them high sentences just to deter other people. It's barbaric behavior. Like cutting the hand off a thief so others know what will happen if they get caught stealing.
- unwise-exe 4y ago
  > amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them That's not how it works, it's about getting the accountants or lawyers or whoever to tell that person's boss "this can be expected to cost us $XXXX".
  - lajamerr 4y ago
    Lawyers are sophisticated bunch they know these amounts will garner taglines. Do you honestly believe that these lawyers/judges don't incorporate public perception into their accounts of what they think a fitting punishment is and use them as a way to lead public policy/deterrence for particular crimes?
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  > And I don't want my government prosecuting people and giving them high sentences just to deter other people. Deterrence is the whole point of punishing crime. Every society in human history has done this. It's not "barbaric," what's "barbaric" is allowing criminals to do horrible things to innocent people without any incentive against it.
  - lajamerr 4y ago
    Deterrence for the individual is fine only if it's made with sole intention/consideration of that individual. Additional punishment added on to deter unrelated future parties is not fine. I am not responsible for the future people and their actions.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  > There's a clear difference between deterring a individual and putting a amount so high it will get taglines so people will pay attention and think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught. That difference is not clear to me. What sort of deterrence to an individual would not also lead others to think that could happen to them as well if they were to commit a similar crime and get caught? - or, to consider the contrapositive, if it does not invoke that thought in others, why would the convicted be deterred from trying again? The fact that they were caught once does not mean they will be next time. Furthermore, I dispute the idea that deterring people from committing a harmful act, before that harm is done, is not a justifiable goal for a society (note that this does not imply that I must therefore endorse the cutting off of thieves' hands.) Quite often, the perpetrator cannot compensate fully for the harm done, and it is always better if it were not done in the first place. We should note that what is being deterred here is Oberlin's decision to fight the case rather than accept its obvious responsibility and compensate the plaintiffs for the damage it did. Personally, I think this is a net benefit to society, and if it makes entities in similar situations think twice, so much the better.

xyzzyz 4y ago

Why would we not want to stop others? Why not consider a positive side effect of deterring others? Sorry, what are you saying here does not make any sense to me at all. It seems like that you are suggesting that we could simply not punish people at all for first offense, as long as they can credibly promise that they won’t reoffend. After all, if they won’t reoffend, under what you say, there is no point in punishing them at all. Sure, this means that people will know that they can scot-free offend one time, and so many more will likely do, especially if the risk of being caught is relatively low, but you explicitly want to ignore that. This is crazy to me. No society ever worked like that. Additionally, deterrence function is not “virtue signaling”, this is not what the term means.

lajamerr 4y ago
Why should my punishment be more severe because you want to stop others from doing something in the future? That's a disproportionate amount of punishment for the individual. Punishment should be equal to the crime, not have an additional component to be used to deter others who I have no affiliation with. Public prosecution is absolutely terrible way to deal with dealing out punishment. Not all individuals are the same, not all crimes are the same, but once you are given a guilty verdict judges are expected to give out sentencing guidelines that match similar tag lines/crimes regardless of circumstances. Punishment should be more personalized and should be a performance improvement plan based on the individual and how they respond to the effective plan/action.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  I can only say that I thoroughly disagree with this, and I have every single society that has ever existed behind me.
  - lajamerr 4y ago
    So you should be punished for a crime for more than the harm/compensation/individual deterrence, just so that you can stop future crimes by unrelated people by you being a peg that others can consider if they might commit a similar crime? I really ask you to consider this from a moral standpoint. Society isn't always right. Sometimes society just does things because it's easier, not because it's right.

soared 4y ago

By your logic rich organizations can purposefully commit crimes against small businesses knowing the fines will be incredibly small.

lajamerr 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with big punishments if it meets the crimes. But I shouldn't have disproportionate punishment so that my case can be used as taglines/references on "you could get this huge big punishment so don't do it."

kansface 4y ago

Because we need incentives so that egregiously bad, intentional behavior doesn’t become a business decision for the rich.

lajamerr 4y ago
Punish those individuals when the time comes, punish them for the equal amount of crime they caused. Don't add additional punishment in order to add a deterrence for others. You should not punish people to stop the future actions of unrelated people by giving certain ones bigger punishments than meets the crime.

chrismcb 4y ago

When a single individual/company intentionally dors something bad why not pin it on them? The payment should be more than just making the victim whole. And it should be enough to make sure the aggressor doesn't do it again. At the same time that should also be a deterrent to others.

lajamerr 4y ago
I agree with everything you said except the last sentence. Why should the punishment for the crime be increased to be used as a deterrent for others? Add a deterrence but only make the deterrence with the intention/scope of the individual who committed the crime. Don't add a deterrence with the intention of stopping other unrelated parties. That is an unfair assessment of my individual crime and the harm that I caused. That is an unequal punishment/consideration that shouldn't be included in the process.

gnicholas 4y ago

The magnitude of punitive damages is not to deter others. It's to deter the responsible party. They are calibrated to be large enough to catch the attention of the party being held responsible. If they were meant to deter others, they would be pegged to the size of other potential wrongdoers. But they are not. They are pegged to the size of the actual wrongdoer.

lajamerr 4y ago
And size is already calculated in with the idea of deterring others based on sentencing guidelines.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Sentencing guidelines are for criminal convictions. This was a civil case. There are also no punitive damages in criminal convictions. This area of law is a bit nuanced, and the details matter. In the US, criminal punishments are not ratcheted up based on your wealth. I believe there are some Nordic countries where this is done, with traffic violations at least.

ALittleLight 4y ago

This seems like an insane opinion to me. The college is extremely wealthy and made a considered choice to repeatedly slander a small business and attempt to bankrupt it. The college acted like a malevolent psychopath, not in the heat of the moment or at the end of some escalatory chain, but after plenty of time to consider and deliberate. The punishment must be a large dollar figure because the college is so rich - if it were small then it would not punish the college. As is, the punishment is much too small.

lajamerr 4y ago
I have no opinion on whether this particular college punishment is equal to the crime. I was responding to that one poster on the merits of punishing more significantly for crimes to deter other unrelated future people who may or may not commit similar crimes.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> Edit: Apparently this is a unpopular opinion. All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Have you heard of "treble damages"? I think treble damages are easily within the realm of fitting the crime. And the full $30M before interest is less than 3x the $11.5M in combined bakery and legal losses. Also, you have to factor in the chance of getting punished. If a parking meter had a fifty cent fine for not paying, nobody would ever pay.

Kadin 4y ago

> All I am calling for is that punishment meets the crime. Not meets the crime and exceeds it in order to prevent unrelated parties from committing the same crime. That doesn't make a lot of sense. The whole point of the criminal-justice system is to attempt to deter criminal behavior. It's practically definitional. Although the systems have often been merged in recent times, many places (including some parts of the US) had two entirely separate court systems: a "court of law" for the enforcement of laws by the government, and the imposition of punitive sanctions to discourage behaviors by making them unprofitable to engage in, and "courts of equity" wherein individuals could bring suits directly against each other and where the judges had broad discretion to impose various remedies (e.g. specific performance). An example would be if your neighbor stole one of your cows: the government (often in the form of a sheriff or magistrate or similar) could decide to go after them in a court of law, because having people stealing each others' livestock is socially corrosive, hence why it's illegal. But you as the owner of the cow could petition a court of equity for relief, independently of the government's decision to pursue action in a court of law. The court of equity's remedy might basically be "give back the cow", or if they had already eaten the cow, maybe they'd tell them to give you an equivalent cow instead. There are a few US states that still maintain these dual systems: Delaware is the most well-known one, and its Court of Chancery deals with lots of contract disputes and such between private parties. Tennessee and a few other states are similar. AFAICT the existence of courts of law (or their equivalents) are almost universal features of complex civilizations and probably governments generally. If there's no punishment for breaking the law, you don't have laws, merely polite suggestions.

kipchak 4y ago

The four traditional functions of criminal punishment are Retribution (an eye for an eye, or the punishment meeting the crime) Deterrence (for fear of punishment, people do not commit crimes), Rehabilitation (correcting the behavior), and Incapacitation (someone in jail cannot commit crimes). One downside to retribution only is that the odds of being caught for a crime are less than 100%, so someone stands to gain more than they stand to lose by breaking the crime. For example if the punishment for tax perjury was commensurate with my ill gotten gains, I wouldn't have any reason outside of a personal moral framework not to lie. But if instead I can go to prison for 3 years, a good chance to save a fair chunk of money is much less attractive.