Please don't post unsubstantive rants to Hacker News, even if you feel strongly about art.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

General deterance. It makes it clear to others that destruction of evidence can be far worse than the crime you are attempting to hide.

"If only we lock up this one more person, _then_ it'll finally be clear."

How's prison working out as a deterrent, generally?

It works fine. Just because some people can't stop themselves from committing crimes, that doesn't mean the general public doesn't respect deterrents.

There are so many things I wouldn't do because I know I'd get in trouble.

Netherlands extremely rarely gives anyone an actual life sentence for anything. Plus, it's a property crime, and depends if she had knowledge of their value and intent based on that. Also, you'd need to lock-up half of the European aristocracy and most galleries for taking, and not willingly-returning, works taken from WW2 Holocaust victims and survivors. So in the grand scheme of things, she's, at most, a committer of criminal mischief.

It is more than a property crime. In canada/uk/us it is destruction of evidence. It is conspiracy after the fact. It may be harbouring a fugative. Those would all attach to the original grand theft. She could be looking at serious time should prosecutors go that route.

> you'd need to lock-up half of the European aristocracy...

Is that bad?

Suggest nickname change ;)