Let's start seeing some other countries around the world start doing this, like India, Russia, and China. My 80 year old mother was recently tricked into wiring money by Indian scammers threatening her. I'm really sick of this shit.
I'm really not sure fraud is the biggest issue plaguing these countries... corruption is definitely an issue (though the US has in some cases legalized it into lobbying and PACs and the like). It's great that people doing scummy things are held accountable, but are the Sa cklers of Purdue P harma in prison? They've (unarguably) hurt and killed way more than Holmes did, but where's justice for that?
I lived in a developing country for a while and the corruption can be maddening. You might agree to partner with someone to buy property, they take your money and cut you out. In corrupt countries, you might be entirely screwed - that person has too many connections and influence, nobody will touch them.
At least in countries with rule of law you could sue them. You might not win or be made whole, but at least there is a system that is somewhat dependable.
See - 90s: Enron; 00s: Madoff; 10s: Holmes
Really?! Interesting...
I agree, a functioning society needs good law and order, and some way to prosecute and bring criminals to justice.
But I am personally not convinced that sending someone "to jail for a long, long time" is the solution. How is that productive? I think we need to come up with better ways to serve justice than physically restricting otherwise smart or productive individuals to a room for decades on end. As soon as we are done with abolishing the death penalty, I would want us to start looking at abolishing this "decades long locking up" of folks. I don't have a good solution as I said, but I am convinced that this is not it.
Or, do we really think it was down to just this one person's actions?
Some people are or became irredeemably antisocial and need to be kept away from society at large. Watch any liveleak video around the mexican cartel if you need a reminder of what evils people are truly capable of.
That being said, sure want to properly reintegrate everyone possible. But society understandably does not exactly welcome past offenders back with welcome arms. It is kind of hard to be productive again when few places will even consider hiring you. That isn't a stigma you can just wish away.
At least for murder, one of the strongest predictors of whether a person will kill is if they've killed before. So prison is productive because it makes it more difficult (though not impossible) for a person to keep killing.