Yes, but like I said right at the beginning it works fantastically well as a sort of armchair theory. Same way we can sit here and say that drugs should be super illegal and the penalty should be death, voila, no more drugs, right? We know this doesn't work.

Making ransom payments super illegal wouldn't stop them from being made. People(parents in particular) would absolutely try to find a way to pay the ransom anyway to save their children, no matter the consequences. Like I said in another comment - what kind of punishment would stop the parent of a child in danger from paying the ransom? Years in prison? Most parents would gladly make that trade to make sure their kid goes home. There isn't a punishment here that you can establish to absolutely eliminate ransom payments, and as I'm sure you can see - as long as *any" are paid, criminals will keep using them as a tool. So imho, any effort(and therefore money) spent on fighting the ransom payers is completely wasted time and money. Not paying a ransom does not reduce the chance of further kidnappings significantly enough to make it worth it, and I'm nearly certain you can't come up with a punishment harsh enough to scare people away from making the payments.