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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

This is part of a larger situation where everything is becoming criminal law. The Yates and Bond cases illustrated the breadth of the government's use of laws to punish undesirable behaviours, and tens of thousands of regulations have criminal penalties with no mens rea requirement. The government is even using criminal statutes against corporations (not the officers or employees), which doesn't make any sense.

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Having recently had my first major experience with US law, Im starting to understand (not agree with. Understand) why this happens.

The US civil laws really only apply to middle class suckers. Rich people can use their lawyers to work around it. Poor people are "judgment proof". If you don't have a house, you're working under the table, and your bank account is empty, there's fuck all people can do against you. With criminal law on the other hand...

There's only so many times you can hit someone who's judgement proof before you start wishing you could get them tossed in jail.

I recently had someone who screwed me over from about a very large amount of money. He was laughing at me in the face making sure I remembered that even if I won a lawsuit against him, I'd never be able to collect. He was unfortunately quite right.

In a sense, holding corporations criminally liable is better. The fact that a corporation can't go to prison almost balances-out the lack of mens rea requirement.

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