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A comment on The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people. Parent comment

Re:The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people by comrade_ogilvy on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @07:00PM (#6402460)
Bernie is an interesting example for a number of reasons.

The likelihood of being caught is probably a bigger factor in deterrence than the severity of the punishment itself. White collar criminals probably get away with a lot of small crimes (I am guessing).

Madoff is a very extreme example because he was doomed to eventually be caught. But we can look at it the other direction and consider how many hundreds(?!?) of small and large crimes did he get away with before it all collapsed on him?

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Re:The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people by auctiontheory on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @09:26PM (#6402902)
He was most certainly not "doomed to be caught" in his lifetime. As you say, he's probably been crooked his entire working life, yet enjoyed a very successful and lucrative career, and was busted only at the age of 70. Plenty of "lucky" criminals die of natural causes before being busted.
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