And these two are related. You can’t but the people you describe behind bars under harsh conditions unless you treat those who did worse worse.
Having monetary damages for white collar crimes also means that if you profit enough from crime, fines are just the cost of doing business, and it’s even less of a disincentive than incarceration. He allegedly tried to pay to have six people killed, so while he’s sort of white collarish, there’s probably some red stains there too. Narcotics, depending on the drug, is not a victimless crime exactly.
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I see no reason why the profits from white collar crime can’t be seized completely plus further monetary punishments.
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Because some will get away with it, or think they can. Some will make enough to leave the country and go somewhere it’s difficult to extradite. They also use funds to buy the best lawyers, so they hold onto some of the winnings. Rick Scott is an example of someone who amassed great wealth illegally, payed off some fines, and used the winnings to buy further influence. The Sackler family is another. Ken Lay of Enron made millions, died on vacation, never served a day. A lot of societal wrong can get done. Giving these people a second crack at breaking society is a danger to society.
I don’t think he deserves life in prison, but the whole fake internet hitmen thing makes me much less sympathetic to DPR.
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You can forbid them from running a business. If they can do it anyway, they can do so from jail.
Pshaw, imagined is right!
As if he’d have a sports-ball in there. 
That’s the soccer ball Putin gave him (he has a framed photo of it next to his photo of him playing big boy in the truck). He whispers into the ball hoping Putin will hear him.
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Not ‘unsuccessful’ (which I assume would include “I shot him, but the damn doctors were able to save him, at least he lost his leg though” - which I agree would be an indirect violent crime, without enough indirectness for me to think it warranted distinguishing it from actually being the person to pull the trigger).
It was ‘didn’t happen’, nobody went anywhere to try to kill anyone.
On the other hand the reason nobody went anywhere to kill anyone because he happened to pay a undercover cop (or the moral equivalent of the same) to do the killing.
So one could argue it wasn’t a violent crime, even indirectly because no violence actually happened. One could also argue that that is irrelevant because the no violence was because the accused hired the wrong person, not because the accused didn’t want the violence.
More like trying to argue no violence happened because the accused forgot to bring a gun, and decided to come back, but got arrested on the way home.
Which I think normally does get you charged with a significantly lesser offense, but one could argue that morally it is the same as actually shooting. (the best counter argument I can come up with here is if the accused really did bring the gun they may have felt remorse before pulling the trigger, and changed their mind, but getting arrested prior to actually attempting to act they were unable to get a real sense of the finality and wrongness of their actions…and a counter-counter argument there is ‘too bad’)
I’m happy to be proven wrong and INAL, but “it didn’t happen therefore it’s not violence” isn’t any sort of legal standard I’m aware of.
Not that much less. In my state, for example, attempt is just one level below the target offense. Same thing for conspiracy to commit the target offense. Solicitation (paying someone else to commit the crime) is two levels below the target offense. Solicitation of first-degree murder (which this sounds like at the very least) is still a serious crime. To go a step further, some states have decided that there’s no meaningful difference between personally murdering someone and paying (or otherwise assisting, with the necessary criminal intent) someone else to to murder someone. You know, like a mob boss who ordered the murders saying, “I never murdered anyone!”
Also, the fact the the solicitee turns out to be a cop is never a defense. As far as the solicitor knows, he’s paid someone to commit a murder. That, in itself, is a crime. And at any rate, that conduct is definitely something that can be considered at a sentencing hearing, at which the government’s burden of proof for sentencing factors is “more likely than not” rather than the higher “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Wouldn’t things that don’t happen not actually be anything? The murder/attack didn’t happen, so it wasn’t violent. It also wasn’t a loving caress, or an act of art. It just wasn’t.
The act of hiring someone and giving them money to kill is in and of itself illegal, so it is still a crime.
It just isn’t a violent crime. Not for lack of trying, and maybe that is of vital importance in sentencing though.
Good to know. I mean, I don’t go out and hire killers, so I haven’t done any research on just how much trouble that would get me in.
I’m all for that.
In fact I’m not positive that morally there should be a difference between pulling the trigger, or paying someone else to do so (if you have a good faith belief that they will).
However if we have a legal distinction, I don’t see how it serves us to ignore it. Hiring someone to kill is clearly an illegal act (unless you run a government, then it is debatable). However given that we have laws about which particular illegal act it is, I don’t really like conflating them.
So by this logic hate crimes aren’t an act of violence as long as nobody is physically injured?
“Conspiracy to commit” in most jurisdictions has the same penalties as “Committed”. Why? Because it often ends in the same thing, and the conspirator has the elements necessary: the guilty mind (genuinely wants the victims dead) and the action taken (gives the order to cause the victim to be dead, with the expectation that it will be carried out).
And yes, murder for hire is – in most jurisdictions – conspiracy to commit murder regardless of whether murder actually occurs.
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If the hate crime involves punching, stabbing, burning, or other forms of physical contact is is violence. If not it can still be a hate crime, and a serious one, but not in my opinion violence. Although apparently the legal definition is a bit more inclusive “the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force”. So swinging a bat in the air while indulging in hate speech is violent by that definition. Same speech while sitting at a desk arms still and no weapons on display isn’t. I’m unhappy with that exact definition, but hey, I don’t get to rewrite dictionaries just because I don’t agree.
I’m ok with that (I’m sure this will ease the mind of all the law makers in those states).
I would be more ok with a failed murder for hire having a sentence more like attempted murder, but at the same time I’m not all that upset if the attempted murder and actual murder had the same sentencing guidelines, so who am I kidding.
I’m involved in a long internet debate on the appropriateness of describing someone as committing a violent act for either being on the paying side of murder for hire, or being on the paying side of a murder for hire where the murder attempt was never made.
I don’t actually care so much about the exact sentence. I’m just offended by applying the term violent to someone who didn’t actually interact with whomever the violence (that didn’t even happen) was directed at.
Bad person did bad thing, we agree on that. We are disagreeing on the label of the bad thing.
So spray painting a swastika on the side of a synagogue isn’t an act of violence to you? Domestic violence doesn’t count if it’s just verbal/emotional abuse? If the answer to any of these is yes, then clearly your definition of violence differs from my own and the law in general.
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