Register theft also occurs so does stealing from the common tipjar. It's not always 10s of millions, often it's thousand per year that people siphon off. It's till financial crimes.

Financial crimes are not violent and therefore should be punished lightly.

If you're a rational criminal, you might think along these lines:

* I am considering committing a crime that is worth X to me.

* The price (punishment) for this crime is Y.

* I only have to pay the price if I'm caught and convicted, both of which have some probability between 0 and 1.

So the effective price for committing this crime is Y multiplied by the probability I'm caught and convicted.

If

    X > P(caught) * P(convicted) * Y

Then I should commit the crime. Otherwise, it's not worth it.

For financial crimes, it's safe to say that P(caught) and P(convicted) get lower and lower the richer and more powerful you become. You have access to the best accountants and attorneys, making certain financial crime reliably profitable and increasingly attractive.

Therefore it stands to reason that while there is a line past which a punishment becomes excessive, an effective punishment must lead would-be criminals to decide that the risk is not worth it. Until this is the case, we have to either increase P(caught & convicted), or else increase Y; we can't do neither.

Probably increasing both is best; an increase in fines (Y) could fund the increased enforcement (P) necessary. Good luck passing those laws, though.

the second term is more clearly written as: P(convicted|caught)

That makes no sense.

A home burglary where no one's present is non violent. Do you think that should be punished lightly? It causes orders of magnitude less damage than a lot of financial crime.

Burglary carries a presumption of force.

People steal packages off doorsteps all the time. It requires no force.

Not burglary.

You may be confusing burglary with robbery.

> Burglary is a crime under both the common law and the model penal code. Exact definitions of burglary under the common law vary by jurisdiction though they all criminalize some form of illegally entering a building at night with the intent to commit a crime within.

From https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/burglary

Typically this means you've broken into a domicile (sometimes lesser charges of Burglary exist for non-domicile, eg a vacant commercial building). If you break into someone's home, at night, while it's occupied, the law presumes you intended to do violence.

This presumption is usually correct!

This https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/459/ says that just entering a building with the intent to commit a crime counts as burglary even if no force was required.

> If you break into someone's home, at night, while it's occupied, the law presumes you intended to do violence.

Well yes. But I explicitly said "no one's present". And it usually happens during the day where I live, because that's when people work.

Why does violence matter when determining a punishment?

Someone stealing my life savings will have a much greater impact than someone punching me in the face.

How light can a punishment be before it's no longer discouraging the crime?

Clients of Bearings bank and Nick Leeson would disagree

Weak trolling attempt, and TBH totally wrong forum to troll in the first place.