[Kaveren]

> "“Police have so far advised the family not to meet the requirements.”

This is good advice from their point of view because it lowers the incentive to commit these types of crimes in the future.

For the individual person, it is most wise to pay the ransom and ignore what law enforcement tells you if you want to see the person back.

[ukoki]

This is why it should be illegal to pay a ransom

[mrguyorama]

Yet at the same time, as an individual criminal there is no incentive to actually return the person or even keep them alive once payment has been recieved

[brokenmachine]

Of course there's an incentive to not kill them.

Most people don't actually enjoy murdering innocent people, and if the police found the dead body then it's a murder investigation which would be taken more seriously than a kidnapping/ransom.

All they'd need to do is blindfold the victim and drop them at a random location. It'd be much less risk than disposing of a corpse.

[Kaveren]

This is true, but in practice there's a good chance they will be released if you pay. I don't have statistics on this on hand, but from cursory knowledge I'd be surprised if it was less than 70%-80% of the time a ransom was paid, the person would be freed. Statistics on that sort of thing are hard anyway because many kidnappings go unreported.

Ethics aside, killing the person after you receive your ransom simply worsens your punishment for little gain (provided the hostage can't identify you). Besides, should you want to take future hostages, it lowers the likelihood of being paid.