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I think fraudsters should have to work off the money they stole at prison wages…punishments are supposed to be deterent and prevent people from commingting crim
by burkesquires 9mo ago
I think fraudsters should have to work off the money they stole at prison wages…punishments are supposed to be deterent and prevent people from commingting crime…don’t seal a billion dollars becasue IF you get caught you will have to pay back half is not a deterent…BUT if they have to pay off a billion dollars at 13-52 cents/hour…that is a deterent!
- free_bip 9mo agoI wouldn't want to see that. That's called slavery! And no, the severity of the crime does not (IMHO) justify it.
- matusp 9mo agoJust to play devil's advocate, you're okay with forcing a criminal to sit in a room for the rest of their life, but you're not okay if they also have to work for society during that timeframe. What is the main argument why the first case is okay and the second is not.
- llmslave2 9mo agoProbably for the same reason that it's generally seen as less intrusive to prevent someone from doing something, compared to forcing them to do something.
- vincnetas 9mo agothats why for some prison systems main goal is not punishment but rehabilitation. i think this is scandinavian approach. "The stated goal of the Swedish prison system is to create a safer society by reducing recidivism and rehabilitating offenders rather than focusing solely on punishment. This is achieved through humane treatment, education, and reintegration programs designed to prepare prisoners for life after release."
- devsda 9mo agoBecause it creates perverse incentive for government to put more people in prison. Right now the punishment is confinement. When you add effectively unpaid labour in prison as part of acceptable punishment, you're also paving the way for a future where unpaid labor as a standalone punishment is also acceptable. That's just slavery by law.
- hvb2 9mo ago> Because it creates perverse incentive for government to put more people in prison. Except for some rare cases, I think you'll find that the cost of keeping an inmate in prison for a day makes it that you never break even
- thelock85 9mo agoOr the taxpayers foot the bill for keeping the inmate in prison while private interests (including but not limited to private prisons and select contractors) take additional profit off the unpaid labor instead of passing savings to the consumer
- reed1234 9mo agoBreaking even is more attractive than debt for a cash-strapped city
- blobbers 9mo agoOutside in society, I have to work to pay my rent, to pay for my food. Inside a prison, should they not have a similar responsibility? They commit a crime and as such are held in stasis? Should they not at least carry the burden of themselves
- navigate8310 9mo agoApologies for my ignorance, exactly what kind of jobs do prisoners work inside that benefit the society outside?
- 9mo ago
- saghm 9mo agoIf you aren't already seeing it, it's because you're eyes are closed or you're intentionally looking away: https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/ https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/
- hasperdi 9mo agoSlavery as punishment is actually allowed by the constitution... AMENDMENT XIII Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment
- user_7832 9mo agoJust because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical or moral, and there are enough examples of things in such categories.
- cyberpunk 9mo agoNot just permitted, but actually widespread. If you’re imprisoned in Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, you are going to be doing unpaid forced labor which is slavery, and many of the prisons are privately owned. Federal prisons pay roughly $0.12 to $0.40 per hour for regular jobs, which isn’t much better. The hypocrisy of the US is breathtaking sometimes, and the current administration has the gall to criticise europe.
- stavros 9mo agoThat doesn't mean it's right, it means the constitution is wrong! The constitution isn't a holy book, it's some opinions someone wrote down on paper. Some of them might be wrong.
- vlovich123 9mo agoThe only way to get it to change might be to force it upon the middle and upper class.
- inamberclad 9mo agoI'd like to see a prison sentence for corporations.
- x3n0ph3n3 9mo agoI'd like to see the death penalty (dissolution) for them.
- llmslave2 9mo agoHow would that work. Would the employees be banned from working together again or something?
- saghm 9mo agoThe corporation would be terminated, all of its copyrights and trademarks would be nullified, and the assets seized. If investors want to try to spend their money on building the exact same thing again under a different name after those losses, that's their perogatice. I suspect that after a few of these occurrences they might start to get cagey about whether they want to give money to someone who's had this happen before though.
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo agoThe process you're describing is hardly unheard of. The problem is that a large corporation's assets include things like employees, office buildings, supplier contracts, etc, which generally aren't valuable except in the context of the business unit they operate within. So if you want to maximize recovery, you have to keep critical business units intact, which often means that large parts of the business survive in all but name. Purdue Pharma is a recent instructive case. The marketing folks did some terrible stuff, but it would be pretty rough on victims, employees, and patients who need pain meds to respond by tearing down Purdue's factories and auctioning off the contents. So the bankruptcy plan calls for keeping the factories running, transferring them to a new company called Knoa, which will be owned by a trust that's dedicated to managing the opioid crisis. Isn't Knoa just Purdue wearing a new hat? Kinda, sure, but there's no better alternative.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 9mo agoThat sounds like something you’d read in a Facebook comment. This is government-sanctioned slavery, and I strongly doubt that it would serve as a deterrent. People routinely put much more on the line for much less.
- mr_toad 9mo agoThere’s a lot of research of people for whom punishment obviously didn’t act as a deterrent, and unsurprisingly this research concludes that the prospect of punishment doesn’t act as a deterrent. There is no research I’m aware of on people for whom the prospect of punishment did act as a deterrent (i.e. people who decided not to commit the crime). So I argue that there is a very big selection bias in literature surrounding the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent .
- f1shy 9mo agoAFAIK, this is a (dangerous and misleading) simplification. Punishment absolutely works as deterrent. Boy I know people that would absolutely forge the tax declaration, if it wasn't a terrible fine if they do! The key point is the probability of the punishment being enforced. There is a trade off calculation going on, like "I could get 5 years prison and 10 grand fine... IF they catch me!". Studies suggest, that if you have 100% probability of being caught, then the punishment is extremely good deterrent.
- Closi 9mo ago> There is no research I’m aware of on people for whom the prospect of punishment did act as a deterrent (i.e. people who decided not to commit the crime). Surely this can’t be true - as a trivial example I would be surprised if removing parking fines wouldn’t increase parking violations, or if Singapore stopped punishing littering that it wouldn’t affect the amount of littering etc Maybe the difference between a 10 year or 20 year sentence for murder doesn’t make much difference, but if murder had no punishment at all I would be very surprised if that wouldn’t raise the murder rate!
- Throaway198712 9mo ago
- janalsncm 9mo agoAt that rate you can pay back maybe $1000 per year, so if you’re only going to live 30 more years there’s no difference in punishment between 30k in fraud and a billion dollars in fraud. Punishment is the same, so might as well scam more.
- matwood 9mo agoThe movie Heat addresses this scenario in the opening scene. A guard is shot 'accidentally' during a robbery even though they didn't intend to kill anyone. At that point they killed all the guards because 1 guard or 3 guards, it had become a capital murder crime so might as well not leave any witnesses.
- donmcronald 9mo agoSeize the generational wealth they accumulated. Make their parents, siblings, kids, grandkids, cousins, etc. demonstrate how they earned their money and take every penny they can’t link to honest means. The discussion around billionaires needs to move away from taxing their income and beyond taxing their wealth. We need to start talking about how much of their wealth we should be taking away. Light it on fire or delete it. The whole world will be better off.
- thayne 9mo agoThat might, maybe, make it more effective as a deterrent, and possibly as retribution, but it would be less effective for restitution (since it would take much longer for those defrauded to get paid back).
- tobr 9mo agoOk, so they have to. Or else what? Back of the envelope, it would take somewhere between 200k and 1 million years of 24/7 work to pay it back at that rate.
- f1shy 9mo agoThey should absolutely pay the money back. But why prison wages? Let they produce what they can, and pay back, with interest and all you want. I think it is more important that they are able to "undo" the damage, as to make they suffer.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo agoThe problem is that fraudsters won't be "producing", but instead will be stealing from others. They need to be in prison not because it's a punishment but because they cannot be trusted to participate in society honestly. However, I don't think it's practical to get fraudsters to pay back all the money in most cases as they won't be able to. What we need is a faster way to detect and imprison fraudsters to limit the damage they do. Also, most people don't respond to the "size" of punishments, but more to the likelihood that they will be caught.
- sharts 9mo agoI mean even at extremely high wages, cracking a billion is more than a lifetime
- jaredklewis 9mo agoFortunately we have a perfect justice system that never makes mistakes and never abuses their power, so let’s put all the convicts in prison for life for Mac deterrence!!
- salawat 9mo agoNah. Just woodchipper them. More practical. Cheaper.