Hacker News Reader

Comment by WolfeReader | Hacker News Reader

Edit: thanks to all who actually engaged in discussion with me! I'm rethinking this now. Original post follows:

Non-violent crimes should not be punished by imprisonment. Let the offender do some civil service, be banned from the internet, forefit their assets to the victims and the state. Save prison for violent offenders.

View on HN

Let’s say you run a successful Ponzi scheme. You get ten thousand investors to fall for your fraud, and lead them to believe wholeheartedly that their money is safely invested in your scheme. When it collapses, the financial turmoil is so great it causes 0.1% of your “investors” commit suicide. In this case your fraud clearly had a strong influence on 10 people ending their lives. It seems to me in this case there is some argument for imprisonment in this case, as you would definitely go to prison for causing 10 people to die in other circumstances.

What you're talking about is called "felony murder", and it is not a universally-agreed-upon point of view. See https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/09/24/a-person-can-b...

Stealing money and fraud are very serious crimes, because they have the power to completely destroy a person's life, just as much as a punch or a kick can, in fact much more.

The total impact of non-violent crimes can be much worse; a blanket rule like that wouldn't make much sense.

Would you rather be robbed at gunpoint with no physical harm and lose $100, or have your retirement savings entirely disappear in a fraud? What if that goes for 1000 other people also?

Honestly, I'm finding this pretty persuasive. Thanks!

You can destroy many people lives without physical violence.

Certainly! I know a guy who got laid off recently, and he has a child with a sensitive medical condition who was relying on the guy's no-longer-existing health insurance for essential medical treatment.

Should the managers who organized the layoff go to prison?

Probably

That's more a feature of the messed up way US ties health insurance to employment, isn't it? Very few layoffs venture close to criminal territory, more part of how business works.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com