[bartread]

I think both of those are flawed views. Not necessarily mistaken, but incomplete. One of the key reasons we imprison people is to prevent them from doing further harm to society: i.e., we put them in prison for our benefit, not theirs. It's definitely good if they're rehabilitated along the way, but rehabilitation isn't necessary for their imprisonment to be a net benefit to society.

[johnisgood]

Any thoughts on victimless crimes?

[jimkleiber]

I think it depends on how we define victim, and especially how direct and tangible the harm needs to be to be considered a victim.

But maybe it also has to do with whether people feel victimized. If no one felt victimized, would we punish?

So I imagine it's probably a combination of who feels victimized and who society believes should feel victimized. Because as others may respond, white-collar crime has people who get harmed as a result of the actions, even if it's not as obvious as the person directly punching them in the face.

One could argue that even the fact of breaking the law can harm those who went through great lengths to not break the law.

[bartread]

What SBF has done is not a victimless crime though: lots of fairly ordinary people lost money because of what he did, some of them lost everything.

Yes, I know some of the people who lost money are rich, and much is being made of that by people who want to troll by saying that's the only reason he really got into trouble (e.g., on Reddit). But that's not true: there are plenty of victims from SBFs crimes, both rich and not rich.

And in this kind of discussion I suggest it's helpful to avoid hypotheticals and to look at the real situations and outcomes relating to the case we're talking about.

[johnisgood]

Oh, I did not mean to say that what SBF has done was a victimless crime, I meant the question to be general, albeit off-topic. My bad!

[bombcar]

What is a victimless crime? Speeding? Even though excessive speed is strongly correlated with crash deaths?

Fraud? The money comes from somewhere; someone is harmed by it (Pratchett's Going Postal has a good line on it - "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

[hackable_sand]

Littering and...?