Jeez I’m wondering what the going price would be for that today.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/thailand-charges-agai...
(However, if you look at the incentives and deterrence, inflicting inefficient punishment like sending someone to prison for a long time, might still make sense.)
So there's a trade-off between handing out more of that punishment in fines to be paid to the victim or in economically inefficient activities like prison time.
As a related matter, I think corporal punishment deserves more consideration. Mostly because it's cheaper to administer than prison, and also avoids forcible socializing convicts only with each other as happens in prison.
(Of course, it's a punishment with a certain cruelty. Alas violence and injury are a common enough sight in overcrowded prisons, too.)
But restitution isn't punishment. Restitution helps reduce harm to the victim, and is a separate issue entirely to punishment.
I was more worried about issues like deterrence and restitution.
Punishment and deterrence are somewhat related, but not the same.
Justice isn't always about providing benefit to those harmed. It's also about providing a framework in which crime is avoided by all because they know there are repercussions they can't avoid.
When the expectation is that you're rich and you can get away with killing someone either through paying someone to take the fall or bribery, then that will happen more often. If the expectation is that everyone is equal under the law, that will happen less.
The US isn't perfect in this regard, but I think it's a lot better than what's being described here. If Ivanka Trump drove recklessly and killed someone, it would be a lot harder for it to play out the same way here. That's not to say she would necessarily face justice, just that it's a lot harder to get out of it, so there wouldn't necessarily be an expectation that it will go away. There's a huge difference in expecting to get away with something and knowing it's uncertain when the consequences are years in prison.
O.J. Simpson famously got off with 'not guilty' in the murder case, but lost the civil suit.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death_claim and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case#Civi...
This is somewhat inaccurate; while it is true that criminal cases can only be brought by the State, civil cases can be brought by the State or private parties.
I just realized that in Oct 28th, 2020. Thanks for that.
The origin of the phrase is in the classical detective story trope.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, itself doesn't derive from household staff taking the fall for their employers, but from them being omnipresent but, by strong social custom, ignored.
The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope).
It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.