| Just today, Dutch newspapers reported that courts in the Netherlands are running trial processes against suspected insurance fraudsters without any involvement from the police or the DA's office [0]. The idea is that the police force is too understaffed to do research against smalltime insurance fraud, but the insurance companies are more than happy to build the case independently. And the judge is still impartial, so everything is fine, right? This worries me because the insurance isn't exactly impartial, right? I assume that once they suspect fraud, they really really want you to have indeed committed fraud, because there's hardly any downside for them if they wrongly accused you. They'll build up a very one-sided case. Apparently in the US, the same problem is solved with an undereducated instead of an understaffed police force, plus semilegal bribes. To be honest I don't really see the fundamental difference between that and the new Dutch idea. I wonder what HN thinks should be the solution. Staff more cops? What if recruiting good ones is prohibitively hard? What if the good ones would really prefer to be put on other cases than "we think Joe Smith stole $2000 from an enormous cash-loaded faceless financial corporation"? It's a hard problem. [0] https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/proefproces-verzekeringsfraudeu... |
(by the way, we know the lightning hit our property, the damage got bigger and bigger in specific direction, and following it the place with highest amount of damage was the tall metallic post where the motor for the gate was attached...)