[rich_sasha]

UK has the idea of contempt of court. Even as it stands, the court can demand you submit some evidence - say an encryption key for a document. And if you refuse, they can even imprison you until you surrender the key.

Another principle is that when someone is destroying evidence, you can presume it contained incriminating evidence.

I think you could make the punishment proportional to the presumed crime.

[Jigsy]

And then what's stopping the police or governments jailing people for crimes _they_ think happened?

Especially if they can claim they "presume the evidence was destroyed."