[sfifs]

Perhaps the problem is setting the wrong incentives. The way to deter fraud is not necessarily to make the benefits administration overly strict but to directly dis-incetivize fraud through stiff penalties. For instace if benefits fraud had a penalty of say 10 to 20 years imprisonment if convicted, the number of people trying to commit fraud would very likely go dramatically down.

[justin_oaks]

I would think "higher chance of getting caught" would be better in deterring any particular crime than "stiff penalties".

My first google search "harsh penalty deter crime" had this as the top:

>Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishment are ineffective partly because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes.

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

[short_sells_poo]

Are you seriously suggesting a 20 year sentence for benefits fraud?

Ignoring the fact that such a system would be ripe for abuse and retaliatory behavior, just accidentally convicting an innocent person would absolutely ruin their life.

Getting wrongly convicted is already a huge tragedy. Now you'd be handing out life sentences basically.

Let's be real, it's not the rich people who tend to engage in benefits fraud and I'd argue most people who do this are in desperate situations.

[BlueTemplar]

Law has to be proportional - you can't deal out similar punishment for benefit fraud and for murder !!

[Beltalowda]

What is "fraud"? People have gotten in to trouble for accepting groceries from family members and not reporting it to the benefit office as additional (in-kind) income. Technically, it is fraud, too, so they're not wrong.

There's a long list of examples of "fraud"; like many crimes it's a scale.