| Jail for organised offences like this actually has relatively good evidence. For most crimes we know the penalties don't really act as a deterrent, because people committing them aren't taking any sort of calculated risk - the smackhead burgling a house isn't going "Man, given the sentencing guidelines in this state I should prefer to go for fewer, high end houses" or "Really car theft has a better risk-reward ratio", so sentences for these crimes basically just take criminals off the streets, they're a form of revenge for the victim, and maybe there's a small chance the criminal is reformed if the prison institution is set up to encourage that. But for crimes like industrial-scale counterfeiting (at one point Lundgren promises his Chinese counterfeiting team will do a better job of copying the next batch of CDs, this isn't one guy with a photocopier and a CD burner, he's hired a factory to make the copies) the actors are really weighing it up so there actually is a deterrent factor. Longer sentences for these crimes actually deter crime. The court says (and the appeal affirms) if you counterfeit a $1000 handbag, that's $1000 in terms of the guidelines. It doesn't matter that your counterfeit was only sold to end consumers for $500, or that the raw materials cost $80, or that your profits at the back end were only $18 per bag, the sentencing is focused on the price of the thing you knocked off. Official CDs for refurbing XP Pro PCs are... drum roll... $25. The court said "$25 per infringement" and now this counterfeiter has to go to jail for a few months. Works for me. Don't worry, I'm sure Lundgren will use his fame to launch a "legitimate" electronic waste recycling outfit when he's out, he can do some great interviews about how he's really changed now, and then the tech press can report with "astonishment" in 2-3 years when the waste he's getting paid to have "professionally recycled to the highest standards" is found dumped in a toxic creek in Alabama or whatever. |