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This is going to be the unpopular take, but this woman committed a crime that is very easy to prevent. Blacklist her from taking any further investments or bein

This is going to be the unpopular take, but this woman committed a crime that is very easy to prevent. Blacklist her from taking any further investments or being CEO or any executive officer. There's really no reason to feed and house her. She should work for her money and we don't need to ruin a child's life. The primary purpose of imprisonment is to keep dangerous (i.e, violent) offenders off the street. Violence is especially bad because it is difficult for the government to prevent all violence, so drastic measures like prison make sense. It is fairly straightforward to stop holmes from doing what she did again using other means. I dunno, just my take. And yes, I feel this way about most white collar crime. Like it or not, white collar crime is not violent; thus prison seems pointless and like a waste of money.

leobg 4y ago
Agreeing with what you say. But the criminal system’s purpose is not just prevention. Actually, nobody is really sure what its purpose is. Why do parents, when they get really angry, sometimes hit a child? Psychology has proven that doing so is a really terrible way of preventing further infractions. So the impulse to punish is not necessarily rational. A whole religion has been built on the idea of consciously letting go of the urge to judge and punish - and it hasn’t worked out for 2000 years. So one reason why the government punishes criminals is to take the wind out of the sails of all the private parties that otherwise would cry for punishment of that person, or take it into that own hands. In that sense, it is essentially a power move by the state in order to remain in control and “keep the peace”.