[nickvanw]

These stories are awful - this wasn't just an administrative headache for people, they served real time and has real consequences.

Filing a false police report is a crime, it would be nice to see that enforced against the company in one way or another.

[jimmydddd]

Agreed. The company is like yeah, we make some minor adminstrative mistakes. But the story says a woman spent 30 days in jail? Picture yourself in her shoes.

[cypress66]

If somebody spent 30 days in jail because of a false report by Hertz, then it's not just hertz in the wrong. Arguably it's an even bigger failure by the judicial system.

[mtnGoat]

Yea the judicial system always favors corporations.

If you steal $100 from work you go to jail. If work shorts you $100 in pay, your gonna need to get your own lawyer. Citizens are not given the benefit of the doubt against entities that only exist on paper and don’t suffer real consequences. It’s backwards to put it lightly.

[twelve40]

if something like that happened to me, i would make it my life's mission to work whatever legal means there are to hunt down every one of these "reporters". Going to jail for a fully paid rental in the States is so absurd, I can't believe it.

[pitaj]

Personally I'd prefer customers be directly compensated than companies just be fined or people imprisoned.

[ethanbond]

Why can't they be compensated directly for the financial damages and then put the perpetrators in prison for all the damages that can't be moneyed-away?

[JumpCrisscross]

> put the perpetrators in prison for all the damages that can't be moneyed-away?

Unless it was done wilfully, this just perpetuates the American fetish for imprisonment. They should be fired. They should be fined. And they should be deeply investigated, to confirm there wasn’t intent.

[plorkyeran]

They had an explicit policy of not retracting police reports after finding out they were false, so yes, it was done willfully.

[SpelingBeeChamp]

I did not read that in the article.

[ethanbond]

Throwing people in jail for smoking weed in their home is the fetish for imprisonment.

Throwing people in jail for literally throwing innocent people in jail, destroying their careers, and stripping them of their basic human rights is far from fetishizing it.

[nitwit005]

They clearly understood they were doing harm, which is outlined in the article. If this was an individual who had done this, there would be no question of them going to jail.

Letting people get away with crimes simply because they're part of a corporation is simply stupid.

[pitaj]

How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.

Justice should focus first on making victims whole, then on rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent victimization in the future. Imprisonment serves neither of those goals.

[rtepopbe]

It depends a lot on what kind of crime you're dealing with.

This isn't a matter of teaching the executives of Hertz that no, they don't need to commit crimes to survive, and how to access alternative means of survival, and all that.

They did this because they were greedy, lazy, and they knew they wouldn't suffer much for it. When you're dealing with white-collar sorts of crimes like this, deterrence is a thing.

[pitaj]

Prison is not the right fit. If you want deterrence, make them pay directly towards the victims. Put them on house arrest. Put them on probation. Ban them from holding a managerial or executive role.

There are plenty of alternatives that don't involve locking people in cells - and that are probably more effective a deterrent.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

I've seen the difference between "requirements that will be expensive to violate" and "requirements that will have the CEO go to jail personally".

Guess which ones get taken a lot more seriously.

[phpisthebest]

Clearly you did not read the story, insurance is covering the costs, and the CEO does not have a care in the world

I am sorry if your false report causes someone to go to jail, then you need to go to jail as well

[eweise]

Prison would be an extremely effective deterrent for executives. Fines don't scare them at all.

[rtepopbe]

While there are other options as you pointed out, I'm not sure it's realistic to say they're more likely an effective deterrent than prison.

People pay tons of money to avoid prison, even temporarily - see lawyers, bail, etc. Same goes for getting prison sentences reduced, even just in part, to house arrest and probation.

Just what amount of fines, house arrest, and probation is going to be more effective a deterrent than prison?

I think there's a reasonable discussion to be had about where the line is between 'enough' deterrence and excessive punishment, but it's a bit absurd to claim that things people happily accept in lieu of going to prison will be more of a deterrent than prison.

[nitwit005]

> Put them on house arrest. Put them on probation.

So, prison. Maybe a slightly nicer prison, but you're still taking their freedom away.

[ipaddr]

Different types of prisons exist. Prison reform should be the next big battle.

[mtnGoat]

House arrest is imprisonment.

[gpvos]

Prison is a great deterrence, if targeted at the right people, in this case the executives.

[pessimizer]

> How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way?

It doesn't help past victims, it helps future victims. Turns out, people do things that hurt other people if it will 1) benefit them and has 2) never resulted in any consequences.

> People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.

That people who have harmed other people face imprisonment is not one of them.

> rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent victimization in the future.

Will this be done with a magic wand?

[411111111111111]

There are several reasons why prison sentences make sense in this scenario.

Or phrased differently: without prison sentences the whole situation becomes a pure numbers game: did they get more money out of the false reports/not fixing the bugs causing this misbehavior then they now have to pay in damages.

These kinds of crimes will continue to become the baseline if there are no real consequences to the people actually being responsible for the deeds (this includes the CEO).

[itake]

> Justice should focus first on making victims whole, then on rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent victimization in the future. Imprisonment serves neither of those goals.

The perpetrators are the employees at Hertz that made the decision. Issuing a fine to the company does not rehabilitate or penalize the decision makers.

[kabdib]

Putting an executive in jail because they wrongly and deliberately caused a customer to be jailed seems pretty reasonable.

What else do you do, make them pay a fine that's just a rounding error on their checking account? Having them wear orange instead of pinstripes for a similar number of days will get their full, undivided attention.

[jonny_eh]

> How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.

Sending people to prison for committing crimes is "fucked up"? We can quibble over which crimes deserve what sentence, but we shouldn't outright dismiss the possibility of imprisoning white collar criminals.

[pitaj]

> Sending people to prison for committing crimes is "fucked up"?

Unironically, yes. Prison is super fucked up.

Prison time barely acts as a deterrent. It doesn't reform criminals. It has high costs for taxpayers.

American prisons are entirely inhumane. Even heard of prison rape? Even violent criminals shouldn't have to endure what goes down in there. With modern technology, house arrest is far better.

Even for extremely violent criminals who are a existent danger, prison is not right. They should be in mental hospitals.

[Lanolderen]

I'll never understand how people in the US believe their prisons are "entirely inhumane". I see it surprisingly often. Every time I've seen a video about an US prison they understandably don't seem like nice places to be at but definitely liveable albeit boring.

[luckylion]

> Prison time barely acts as a deterrent.

What? Why aren't career criminals more brazen in their acts, if not for fear of punishment (which means: prison)?

I totally get the point that you can't just increase the prison sentence and expect the deterrence to scale, but suggesting that punishment "barely acts as a deterrent" sounds insane, especially when we're talking about calculating criminals like Hertz executives. It's not like they have the uncontrollable urge to make false police reports because of some weird psychological defect.

[xdennis]

The primary reason to lock people up is punishment. It's crime and punishment, not crime and deterrence, or crime and reform, or crime and efficient use of taxpayers' money.

Those are all nice-to-haves, but justice is an equal exchange of bad things done by you to bad things done to you.

[phpisthebest]

I can assure if one executive served even 1 day in Jail, Hertz would not have a false police report for years or decades

[mindslight]

> How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.

I see where you're coming from in general, but the standard for non corporate executives is imprisonment. Even if it's a "fucked up idea", it's the status quo.

Arguing against imprisonment in the context of corporate criminals doesn't do anything to change that status quo. Rather it just helps perpetuate the dual class justice system where the upper class gets respect and treated like humans while the faceless lower class gets draconian sentences to be "tough on crime".

[KerrAvon]

Do we know that jail time for corporate executives does not serve as a deterrent?

[pitaj]

Personally, I think if you're the one advocating for locking people in cells, you should be the one proving that it's effective.

[ethanbond]

Pretty sure your gut reaction against the punishment is good argument that it'd deter someone from doing the action that yields said punishment.

Meanwhile we do the equivalent of charging a $90 penalty for a crime that earned $100.

[pessimizer]

It doesn't have to be "effective", it just has to be more effective than not locking people in cells. If you're advocating for something else, you should be arguing its effectiveness over locking people in cells. "Effectiveness" doesn't mean anything outside of a comparison to other options.

[singleshot_]

There are four reasons to incarcerate, as near as I can tell:

Retribution: punish the offender. In the state of nature, if someone offended against you, you could hurt or kill them. Now, the state has a sanitized responsibility to fill that role.

Rehabilitation: give the offender time to think about and learn from his offense.

Isolation: remove the person from society for a while so that if rehabilitation fails, society is still relieved from having to deal with the offender’s misbehavior for a time.

Disincentivization: give others an idea of what would happen if they were caught doing a similar offense.

None of these overlap with “making the victim whole,” which is probably why there is a whole separate system of civil law for that which has nothing to do with punishment (excluding, of course, exemplary damages).

If you think there is no excuse for incarceration, then I’m curious how you’d propose handling the problems of sanitized retribution, isolation, and disincentive for crime. It seems pretty obvious (to me) that the world would be pretty gnarly if unrehabilitated criminals lurked among us, free to perpetrate crimes until an angry victim killed them just because they made a business decision that their crimes outweighed the civil penalty, and would be criminals saw this behavior and got the idea that it would be good for them to emulate the successful, unpunished offenders.

That said, a focus on rehabilitation for those who are deemed possible to rehabilitate seems reasonable to me.

[tcmart14]

Well in this case, it would prevent the current executives who pursued bad policy from being executives at a company pushing short sighted bad policy that has real world consequences on customers. And when they get out, maybe they learned a lesson.

[pitaj]

So would sentencing them to probation where being a company executive is prohibited.

[pessimizer]

Do you feel the same way about rape or murder as you do about direct abuse of the justice system by the powerful against the weak?

[kitanata]

Retribution is part of criminal Justice. We have no problem “rehabiliting” companies (except that it often fails), and we have no problem using retribution as an excuse to send poor black people to jail for long sentences. Why do we struggle with conceptualizing retribution for handling corporate malfeasance? You have a duty as a company leader to your fellow citizens. If you fail, you should be held accountable. I support prison time for the business leaders at Hertz who caused this problem to occur. Lock em up!

[ipaddr]

Retribution isn't part of the system. To deter future crimes is and could be used.

[pessimizer]

> Retribution isn't part of the system.

On what authority are you making this proclamation?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

a) don't underestimate the importance of feeling like having received justice

b) deterrence is important, especially in cases like this: if there are consequences for willfully ignoring something that causes severe harm to others, it's less likely to be willfully ignored in the future. If you can expect to only have to make others whole (if caught), it's a lot easier to just not care. And legal compensation rarely actually makes people whole.

[vkou]

We can, and should do both. Filing a false police report is a crime, and if your boss is telling you to do it, it's organized crime.

"Someone told me to do it" is not an excuse for criminal behaviour, and neither is "We constructed a bureaucracy that results in us engaging in criminal behaviour".

[FpUser]

I'd settle for this: compensate people losses, pay punitive damages and charge owners with criminal fraud. Also instead of blindly arresting people on a corporate whim the police must require proof of actual stealing. Even if car is actually not returned on time it does not constitute theft. Renter should be notified first and given opportunity to answer. The whole thing is fucking perversion of justice in favor of corporation thanks to legalized bribe system / lobbying.

[DerekL]

I agree. “Someone stole my car” is different from “I lent someone my car and they didn't bring it back when they said they would.” Require the rental company to sue the customer and prove to a court that the car wasn't returned.

[pavlov]

Why not both?

[HarryHirsch]

But... intent - Hertz had no intent to have customers locked up or threatened by out-of-control cops, so it's all good. When it comes to life-and-limb matters like this intent really shouldn't matter because it's nothing more than a get-out-of-jail card for executives who couldn't care less about the impact of their policies.

No one important at Wells-Fargo went to jail either - they set policies which were expected to have certain outcomes, but top brass could not have possibly have foreseen the outcomes. I'm sick of plausible deniability, especially when it isn't even plausible any longer, the complaints go back years.

[stainablesteel]

intent is one thing, neglect is another

[ajross]

It is for the crime that you're discussing. Filing a false police report is criminal precisely because of intent. Needless to say, if you have a good faith belief that you report to the police[1], you should be able to do so without fear of prosecution if you're wrong!

[1] And whether people like it or not, Hertz clearly thought this system worked at the time they reported the "stolen" cars; just like software developers think their buggy code works until the user reports or crash telemetry come back.

[phpisthebest]

The key part of the law is "know or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN"

They can not claim poor record keeping and ignorance as an excuse for filing false reports, they SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, which is part of the intent standard in most jurisdictions

1, 2, even 10 reports ok... they suck. 100's of false reports, that is beyond simple clerical error it would not take much to convince a jury that intent is there. i.e they internally setup the process that lead to false reports being filed likely as a say to cut costs

[ajross]

That seems to be assuming facts not in evidence, though. Did Hertz decisionmakers continue operating the system after having been notified it was giving false positives? I tend to agree that sounds like criminal negligence. But nothing seems to be alleging that anywhere.

Flipping it around: would you feel comfortable calling the police to report that criminal negligence? Or would you be worried about getting in trouble for a false report?

The system is tilted towards non-prosecution, and for some very good reasons. No one's going to jail here.

[phpisthebest]

If I was a victim absolutely I would be pursuing that with local prosecutors

>The system is tilted towards non-prosecution, and for some very good reasons. No one's going to jail here.

yes for high profile corporate execs it is, if some Teenager reported his car stolen but then found out a friend borrowed it, not only would the teen reporting the crime go to jail, but the teen that borrowed it likely would still be prosecuted for theft at the same time

Kinda like "resisting arrest" charge that is still valid even when there is no underlying crime to resist arrest from....

Your idea of " system is tilted towards non-prosecution" only exisit for one socio-economic class of citizens

[pessimizer]

It doesn't pass any smell test for filing false police reports hundreds of times to be a series of hundreds of mistakes.

[randcraw]

Or depraved indifference.

[fallingknife]

Intent always matters. And it is absolutely plausible that a rental car could be marked stolen through a bureaucratic error. If fact, in this case, it's more than plausible. It's pretty much inconceivable that a rental car company would intend to just say "fuck you in particular" to a few customers and try to put them in jail.

Those customers should obviously get their judgment money, and Hertz should pay a heavy price (maybe even such a heavy price that they go bankrupt), but no one should go to jail for filing a false police report unless they intended to mislead the police.

[jakelazaroff]

"A rental car company" didn't do anything. Humans working at a rental car company did.

Maybe it was a "bureaucratic error" that fraudulently reported the cars as stolen. That bureaucracy didn't spontaneously emerge from dust. Humans built it.

Why should humans not face legal repercussions for the havoc they've wreaked on their victims' lives?

[xwolfi]

Because the havoc they ve wreaked could have been avoided, if only the police itself, a public service, behaved appropriately.

Declaring a car stolen by mistake shouldnt be the end of the world. One day someone with the same name as me committed an offense and I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.

[shkkmo]

It Hertz didn't intend to ruin people's lives, they would withdraw the police reports when confronted with their mistakes. Instead, the company prohibits that because:

> A Hertz spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2020 that the company has no “mechanism” to withdraw reports and does not do so because “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law enforcement tends not to believe you if you retract it or say you were mistaken,” the spokesperson said. “Hertz’s continued good relationship with law enforcement is important.” [0]

It seems like there is plenty of intent there. The intent to continue lieing to police to protect Hertz's reputation at severe cost to Hertz's victims.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/04/11/hertz-stolen...

[SpelingBeeChamp]

I just searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website for that phrase and was unable to find anything. I also searched Google for the phrase, both with and without quotes, and with/without the words “Philadelphia Inquirer,” and I haven’t found the original source.

Are you able to find the source of that quote? It’s so outrageous, and is so not something that a corporate spokesperson would say, that I wonder if it’s somehow been taken out of context. Or if it even happened.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.

That's great that worked well for you, but in America, I don't have enough faith in cops for that to work out.

The prevailing attitude is that cops have to be "tough on crime", and if some false positives end up happening and an innocent person goes to jail for a few days until their name gets cleared, that's fine. In the mean time, they'll try to find SOMETHING to charge them with.

Land of the free, indeed.

[jakelazaroff]

Yes, there should be legal consequences for the officers involved as well. Blame is not zero sum.

[HarryHirsch]

That's an assertion of belief, not a statement of fact. It's plainly visible that current policies have led to a rash of false police reports (the 168 MUSD judgement is more than sufficient proof), and there is no need why society should put up with the carelessness of Hertz. The problem is pervasive enough to go beyond isolated cases (after all they were slapped with an 8-digit civil fine). Civil law deals with damages to individuals, and criminal law sets expectations for society to prevent trouble. Hertz's incompetence has reached criminal levels, and anyone who rolls out intent as a defense needs to examine himself it that's desirable.

(Speeders, drunk drivers and violently abusive parents rarely intend to kill people but we still have laws on the books to treat such cases adequately.)

[shkkmo]

> the 168 MUSD judgement is more than sufficient proof

This is a settlement, not a judgement.

[halpmeh]

People should also be punished for gross negligence. Hertz filed hundreds of false police reports. After the first few, they should have updated their system. The fact that they allowed the continual filing of false police reports is a willful disregard for the safety of others.

[z3c0]

What you're describing is "culpability" and it most certainly does get considered separately from intent (mea culpa vs mens rea). Not knowing whether or not you were within the boundaries of the law is only an excuse when you reasonably couldn't have ever known, with no opportunity for due diligence. Bureaucracy is not ever going to be a legitimate excuse for not knowing if you were acting within the law, because chances are that you could have verified so with any amount of effort.