Am I wrong in feeling that there is nothing wrong in making things go away by paying the victims? (Not the police though.)
Especially with accidents that are from negligence without mens rea.
I can be very wrong, whenever it's a conspiracy to defraud and endanger the rest of society. A dangerous driver (or any other reckless or malicious actor) not only evades the "correct" punishment, but they are often still the same risk to everybody else in the future. Bribing the witnesses doesn't erase that.
A simplistic example would be a billionaire rapist who pays a victim for silence, and later rapes a second victim. Doesn't the first victim bear some kind of responsibility for helping the criminal evade justice and harm another?
As others in the thread have pointed out, "civil versus criminal" is often used as a distinction because it correlates to whether the transgression is "everybody else's business" or not.
In developed countries, people don't get punished, but shown how they were wrong and how they could do better in the future.
If you're just able to buy you out of evey crime you do, you learn nothing.
What's the ante for a dead person? Is a kid worth less than a working parent?
You can come hit my car with yours in exchange for a big pile of money. It may not be the purest form of justice but if everyone's life is improved in the interaction then that's pretty good.
Great! Hunt and kill people with no families, so there can be no victims or anyone left to grieve for the corpse.
In case it wasn't obvious: my snark goes to 11.
When the actual victim is dead, then they cannot be satisfied, so you go to prison. That part is easy.
This is an interesting question Angus Deaton talks about in "The Great Escape"
So a baby knows hardly any one but has their life ahead of them.
Where as a old person has less years but their death effects more people.
Once you get into a working ability, it depends on their job and qualifications.
It's not an easy question to answer.
But I'd say a young working parent is worth more than a kid.
Examples:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/weekinreview/09marsh.html
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,0...
http://www.bolingriceatlanta.com/ultimate-guide-to-wrongful-...
https://www.millerandzois.com/maryland-wrongful-death-settle...
Interestingly, in the last link:
The average fatal accident or malpractice claim for an adult man is $4.1 million ($1.4 million median); for an adult woman, it is $3.1 million ($1.4 million median)
The average verdict for a minor male is $4.3 million ($2 million median); for minor girls the average is $3.4 million ($1.5 million median). No, we can't explain the difference.
The average verdict for deaths over 65 is $1.3 million.
* Can the victims of a crime be made whole by compensation?
* If a crime harms people at random, is the crime only against those harmed or against all those placed at risk? Or society as a whole?
* How should the justice system balance the relative priorities of making the victims whole against deterring offences that haven't yet happened and reducing recidivism?
* To what extent do criminals take a rational economic view of crime? Should punishments and compensation be scaled relative to prosecution rates?
* Is it just for victim payoffs to depend on BATNA, if it means a poor, powerless person's life is worth less than a rich, powerful person's?
* Can a payoff ever be just if the justice system, which is the victim's only alternative, isn't just?
* Should we accept a less economically efficient response to crime if doing so removes perverse incentives?
That part irks me the most. He's driving drunk, injured 3 people. After running away paid some compensation, which in Cambodia is likely to be small change. No further action required as far as police are concerned.
It's disgusting. Compensation should be part of criminal proceedings rather than void them
It's a sad state of affairs. Cambodians are wonderful people, but the corruption and inequality is all pervasive.
But the issue is that, even if this compensation is judged fair (and there's not a whole lot of incentive for the perp to be fair...), without the criminal charge there's effectively no deterrent against this happening again.
Incidentally, in Finland most fines (including speeding fines) are computed as units of income. So a millionaire is still incentivized not to speed, because they might get hit with a $100k fine: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1759791.stm
How precisely does Finland avoid the loop holes, if they do?
At least, this would be very wrong from a strictly idealized western perspective; I can imagine in a poor society there could be some degree of covert systemic tolerance (this is a wild guess).
As you suggest, the problem is when the authorities are also susceptible to being paid off. As the innocent party, my choice should be "accept your offer to settle, or contact the police and my insurer." When the choice is "accept your offer to settle, or get nothing because the police are already paid off", then I don't have any negotiating power. We have no idea whether the settlement was remotely adequate for the damage that was done, or whether the victims felt like they had to take a token payment because the alternative was nothing at all.
Anything less is a sure sign of corrupted third world shithole.
There's the amount you pay them so that they'll stop prosecuting. Having been hurt, they'd rather take the money than pursue justice, but it would have been better not to get hurt in the first place.
Then there's the amount you pay them so that they consider themselves lucky that you accidentally ran into them and then gave them a lot of money to shut up. They may no longer have a leg, but the boatloads of cash more than make up for it.
The second amount is a lot more defensible, but it's probably also a lot higher.
Putting him in jail won't fix anything; paying restitution is a better outcome. The key is that you shouldn't be able to avoid criminal penalties if you repeat the crime. The "Get out of jail for a fee" card should only be available once.
How did this work? This seems to be a criminal case and the state is the one which brings charges so you can not settle. Also, IIRC - there are fixed punishments once you are found guilty in the US.