Latvia blocking extradition of Gozi writer due to disproportionate US sentencing
nakedsecurity.sophos.com
nakedsecurity.sophos.com
1) local prosecution claims that there aren't any grounds to prosecute on ~half of claims that USA wants to charge;
2) defense lawyers claim and popular sentiment (including politicians) believe that USA doesn't have a just/fair court system for computer related crimes;
3) there is a strong position for local jurisdiction in crimes in "cyberspace" - if some action is legal locally, then people shouldn't care if it's illegal in USA; if some crime carries max penalty of 5 years, as is here for computer fraud; then extraditing him for charges of the USA requested 67 years - essentially life sentence - is unacceptable.
And given their neighbors experience with cyber war I woudl have expected Latvia to take this a lot more seriously
For one, you're not holding people at gunpoint with the threat of violence.
Bonnie an Clyde became folk heroes for striking it to the man they wound not have if they had robbed lots of poor farmers.
The banks will probably try to blame the victim to avoid paying out you must have shared/written down your banking password and/or start selling cyber insurance which will become the next PPI scam in a few years.
Thank you. I've long made the argument that international law is arbitrary and capricious without much buy-in from those around me. It's good to hear you say it.
(OTOH, even where there are well-established principles of international law, the absence of consistent enforcement and application leads to them not being inviolate.)
But even if we assume that, is your claim that the only thing common amongst those three is the majority religion adhered to in each nation?
I think Bush is when we all started taking the US not really so seriously. Or things like the moment we notice the US population still supports him at large even when he says he has to attack Iraq because God told him so. You're just so immature as people and a nation.
Uh, dude, Dubya was so reviled even within the U.S. that he wasn't even invited to Republican political events oriented around electing his own successor. And you may have missed it in the news by he had more "justifications" that he claimed for attacking than merely a God-given mission.
But it's funny you should mention immaturity, given that few would consider pinning a person's thoughts (even the POTUS) as reasonably representative of 320 million people's thoughts.
The second time there were rather virulent protests, celebrity protest (including an Eminem music video) right up to one of the narrowest election victories in some time. I remember it vividly because it was my first election I could vote in. :P
Imagine if China all of the sudden starts wanting countries to extradite people that talk badly about China or help their citizens avoid censorship or whatever, and imagine they actually had the political power to do that, like US has right now.
The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.
Even if it isn't a cop out, it might be better taken as a suggestion for areas to target for improvement (social dysfunction, social cohesion) than as an excuse for complacency.
Go to the south side of Chicago and try to see what sorts of cultural ties exist between the people there and the people in the rest of the city. There is a profound disconnect, and a profound lack of any sense of connection to a common community.
Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. But the sense that one group of people are not even party to the same social contract is not one that is common in Europe, though you see it among Muslim immigrants in the UK and France.
Lack of faith in social institutions breeds crime. If you're a poor teenager in Chicago deciding whether to join a gang, you do it because the gang can protect you. The police won't protect you--the police are there to protect the rest of the city from you.
And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. Even when you take away the overly long sentences and the convictions for innocuous things like mere drug possession, the US has far more crime than Denmark or Norway.
Europe is going to see it too, soon. Below replacement fertility has meant increasing immigration, faster than those people can be integrated. And then Europe too will have to deal with the "us versus them" mentality that arises in such populations.
Not really the way the US does:
Most recent available Gini Coefficients [1]:
Denmark 24.8
Norway 25
Germany 27
E.U. 30.7
India 36.8
World 39
Nigeria 43.7
United States 45
Mozambique 45.6
But, still, such broader social problems aren't the only big problems in the prison or other systems, and even though they need to be fixed, there are big steps that can be taken short of fixing them to deal with other real problems in each of those systems.
> And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior.
Ending drug prohibition would do quite a lot of to mitigate the problem with prisons, even though it wouldn't deal with the biggest underlying problem.
> The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes.
No, but there'd be a lot less broken homes for them to come from if it weren't lots of resources being poored into non-violent offenders being put away for victimless crimes, and there'd be a lot more resources for the kinds of interventions that would stop people from ending up in gangs in the first places.
> That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable.
What makes the problem deeply intractable is people throwing up their hands and saying that the problem is too hard to deal with. (And, mostly, people seeing their own short-term self-interest being in not dealing with the problem.)
[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Have a look at the majority of these addresses for the 2013 murders in Chicago: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ak3IIavLYTovdHYxbDI...
Here's a map for the 52 murders in Chicago in just July 2013: http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/date/2013/7/
I'd love to increase cultural ties, however from a risk-assessment standpoint, Chicago is less safe than being a soldier in Afghanistan: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-ra...
But the same cannot be said of crime rates. Crime rates in the US tend to be higher, but not nearly that much higher and not across the board.
What sets the US apart that leads to high incarceration rates is primarily harsh sentencing (longer sentences, fewer suspended sentences, high minimum sentences, a general focus on retribution over rehabilitation, the "felonization" [1] of everything under the sun).
[1] http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.asp... [2]
[2] Yes, the book is a bit sensationalist, but there's plenty of truth to it. See, e.g. the Kiera Wilmot case [3]: What she did wouldn't have even risen to the level of a misdemeanor in most Western European countries.
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/kiera-wilmot-lawyer-hoping-to...
Of course, it's not the law that's solely responsible for crazy high crime rates compared to other civilized countries, nevertheless some practices used in US legal system can give a lot of incentive to minor offenders to do things they otherwise wouldn't.
Crime tends to be more lethal in the US, not (that much) more frequent.
[1] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/d...
From that point of view, what is most relevant is peoples' perception of crime, and peoples' perception of the criminals, not necessarily actual crime rates. When people see sky-high murder rates, a crime that is considered the most grievous one possible and the kind of crime that becomes a focal point for the public discourse, and when they don't feel a social bond with the people convicted of crimes, they will not be satisfied by the kind of more lenient prison sentences and conditions you see in European countries.
The middle aged suburban voter is not interested in the rehabilitative aspect of the justice system, the aspect that reintegrates criminals into society, because that criminal was never part of that suburbanite's society to begin with. That voter is merely interested in retribution. At the same time, the criminal doesn't see the situation any differently. He has no faith in the institutions of society. He knows that he will never be considered a part of the broader society, so his incentive to really try to be rehabilitated vanishes. So the recidivism rate in the U.S. is double or triple that of places like Norway: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/25/277771/norway-is....
Contrast Norway: http://blog.nj.com/perspective/2011/07/crime_and_punishment_... ("As Norwegians view it, if you’re going to better yourself within a collective society, then you must work within the collective. When it comes to crime, it’s not about the individual. It’s about what — as a society — they did wrong, and what they can correct, and how they can address this politically.")
Now, to circle back to my point: what creates these attitudes? Are Norwegians just better people than Americans? I don't think that's the case. I think the root of the difference is that Americans don't think of everyone as being part of the same collective. Partly because of cultural reasons, and partly because of historical reasons. The lack of homogeneity and social cohesion is a major part of what creates the attitudes. Segregation, in particular, has left an indelible imprint on modern American society. After all, much of the country was forcibly desegregated just two generations ago. To put it bluntly, when a black (or hispanic) kid in inner-Baltimore commits a crime, the white voters in suburban Maryland don't ask themselves, like the Norwegians do, "what did society do wrong? How can we correct the problem?"
In "Song of Myself", Walt Whitman wrote "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them". The Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about how we choose our own levels of identification and some are more morally praiseworthy than others.
So yes, the problem might well be the lack of identification between your white voters in suburban Maryland and your black kid in inner-Baltimore (and vice versa of course), but we can and do change. Society moves forwards, and we are not entirely passive actors in it.
Let's make arguments that encourage greater identification, take social steps to increase identification, etc. It may well be easier for those societies in Europe, but it's by no means easy, which your analysis seems to ignore. These attitudes have to be worked on, and reinforced.
Well, except that they do [1]. And do similar things for other non-murder crimes like robbery [2].
[1] http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2013/03/newark_carjackings...
[2] http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23191897/oakland-robbery-...
Europeans who criticize America often imagine it to be a country of European colonists. That's increasingly not true. European multiculturalists also expect that a person's cultural background will have zero influence on them. That is also not true.
I think that data about crime rates related to different demographic groups is quite important. My purpose is not to be pedantic, although I do enjoy that, but to help clarify the thinking of those who might confuse this demographic data with outmoded and superstitious ideas about "race". I'm sure you're much too knowledgeable to fall into this trap, but there could be others, not as sophisticated as you, who might suffer from common misconceptions about genetics, race, and related issues.
It is interesting that crime rates and other social pathologies are so segregated by race in America. Different experts have different explanations for this. The point is, comparing America against Europe is hard to do when the racial makeup of the two countries is so different.
The legacy of slavery in America cannot be avoided. 14-24 year old African American males make up 1% of the USA population and commit 27% of the murders. Europe had no large scale agricultural African slavery in the 19th century, and its current society has evolved differently as a result.
I agree that government-defined racial categories are too broad and inexact. The true amount of human genetic diversity is far larger and far messier than five racial categories would suggest. Andrew Sullivan addressed the myth that "race is a social construct" on his blog[1].
[1] http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/16/is-race-only-a-soc...
"23andMe would have no problem telling them apart"
If someone you define as "black" marries someone you define as "white" and their child sends a sample to 23andMe, will the report say that the child is white or black? Remember, you claim they will have "no problem".
Andrew Sullivan, from the link you provided: '“race” is a social construct when we define it as “white”, “black,” “Asian” or, even more ludicrously, “Hispanic.”'
It is not hard to take a listing of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a persons DNA and compare them against a database of genetic sequences from various parts of the world to tell where they came from. The same mutation occurring in parallel in two different populations and persisting is rare enough that you can use SNP data to construct a phylogenetic tree of the human population (here is one I googled up[2]). We can tell interesting things from human population genetics, for example that Amerindians probably came from Asia, since the East Asians are there closest genetic cousins.
You should have a mixed-race friend send their spit into 23andMe and see what happens! When races mix, you have genetic admixture. It remains trivial to see which portions of a persons DNA comes from which part of the world because those portions contain SNPs which are only found in certain human subpopulations.
If you are the child of an African father and a European mother (like Barack Obama), you get half your chromosomes from your father and half from your mother. A few bits from each chromosome swap over, but it is not hard to unravel which bits came from Africa and which from Europe.
The government's big racial categories are somewhat inaccurate (especially hispanic, since some hispanics are European and some are Amerindian). But distinct human genetic populations are very real. Razib Khan's blog[3] is great if you want to move beyond the sound bytes and get into the real science of human population genetics. Sadly, liberal views on race tend to be extremely unscientific.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/08/12/the-dna-oly...
No, it's the composition of the species' genomes. If they were created in a lab yesterday the situation would be the same. Unless you believe in some kind of supernatural effect, the way homeopaths believe that water has "memory".
"we see no sickle cell disease in Europeans as we do in Africans"
There is sickle cell disease in southern Italy, and in many other parts of the world outside of Africa. It cuts across "racial" divisions, and follows the historical distribution of malaria.
You avoided the simple question about 23andMe. You claimed they would have "no problem" categorizing people as "white" or "black". So how would they categorize the child of a "white" and "black" parent?
I believe it has been shown that for similar cities, the U.S. system is worse - I think I saw an example of an U.S. and a Canadian city across the border, similar demographics, the U.S. one had 10 times the crime rate, etc..
Of course, the US recidivism rate is 67%, which is horrible, however it's very difficult to compare Sweden and the United States simply because you have some significant differences. It's difficult to assume that the only variable in play between the US and Nordic countries are simply the justice system.
First, you have a demographic differences. You also have significant differences in culture as well. In Sweden for example, single parent families are just 20% of all families with children. Yet in the US, 67% of all black families with children are single-parent, with 42% in the Latino community and overall a rate of over 30% for all families with children in the United States. In 1960, the overall rate was just 9%. I'm not arguing for or against single parent families, but there is a strong correlation between the likelihood of being arrested and the strength of the family unit. Here's an article that discusses it more, including research citations: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-co...
Suggesting that the prison system is the primary cause of recidivism is to miss the point. We shouldn't be focusing on recidivism, we should be focusing on what gets people into prison in the first place.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#Sweden
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/world/europe/swedens-riots...
Go to facebook, find a local newspaper's page. Find a story about a rapist or someone guilty of animal cruelty or neglect.
Here are a couple of quotes I found from comments on my local paper (in the UK):
"It doesn't matter what went wrong he decided to take other peoples possesions by his own choice.he chose to invade peoples homes and didn't care what state he left houses or how the people felt afterwards he is scum.its people like him that ruin lives and he got off lightly from our weak judicial system and needs knee caps drilling as a reminder of why he should keep his thieving hands in his pockets in future." (7 likes)
"All peados should be put into a mincer machine feet first, then when they pass out shut it off, then when they wake turn it bk on. Don't get why they get put on separate part of prison, throw them in with the other prisoners and let them get delt with! SICK CUNTS !!!!!" (4 likes)
"Men who abuse women should be hung!" (3 likes)
etc etc.
Supposing their existed a "rehabilitation pill" and taking it instantly prevented someone from committing the same crime again. What if someone then killed your child or partner? Would you be happy for them to take the tablet and be immediately released?
Btw: In such a future you're describing we surely have ways of preventing crimes just as effective as the pill that turns a murderer into a good member of society.
Some people here seem to be arguing there is no place for punishment at all. I think there is, but humane punishment. Not dumping people into a human shark tank.
Later in life, this belief was tested, badly. My answer was still yes.
According to the philosophy classes survey, I'm not in the majority for this view. I thought that was interesting.
But you do know why this is a terrible point, right?
This is exactly why we have courts; to deliver justice over vengeance, having proven guilt.
Victims and offenders are extremes. Victims want maximum sentencing for vengeance and punishment, offenders want maximum mercy. Neither is likely to be fair to the other. Courts are there to moderate and hand out fair rulings based on societies agreed laws. (yes I know many have problems with laws, but thats a totally different discussion)
Your point relies on the notion that because as a victim we would want maximum punishment for vengeance, that is how the law and justice system should be. Well, no, it is the exact opposite. You must have heard the opposite argument : What if you and your family were starving, would you steal to eat? Would you kill to steal so that your child might eat? Exact same logic, just opposite. Now we can argue for a very lenient justice system, right? Well, the justice system sits squarely int he middle of both. Its must give out fair punishment. Its must be fair to BOTH sides.
This type of point is as bad and manipulative as the "what have you got to hide" routine. IMHO, its an abuse of language and the people its used against. It is politician talk.
But once you pick that low-hanging fruit of prison reform, does the original point still apply or not?
"Ohio's deal requires the state to maintain a 90% occupancy rate, but Janes said that provision remains in effect for 18 months — not 20 years — before it can be renegotiated. As part of the deal, Ohio pays the company a monthly fee, totaling $3.8 million per year." [1]
Another big problem with private prisons and juvenile centers is that judges get greased to send kids to specific centers. [2]
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-01/...
Their argument is pure economical -- "If you tone down the War on Drugs then we will lose profits". Nothing to hide there plain and simple.
Or that case in PA when the local judge was funneling kids to the local prison/"treatment" center.
There is of course concrete evidence to the contrary, as experiments in Scandinavian countries show. Treat prisoners with respect, give them a dignified place of living so they can think about what they did, and you'll find that actually both improves their mental condition and makes them very well suited to rejoin society.
Prison isn't the solution to every criminal problem, and harsh prisons just seem to produce more harden criminals. I wish we got over our squeamishness for non-prison punishments. For example, the "nanny cam" robber in NJ had twelve prior convictions, including one for a similar crime. You should watch the video, but I warn you it is graphic[1]. What does he add to society by staying alive?
Is he going to turn his life around at the age of 42 and suddenly become a good father, an influential artist, or a visionary scientist? Or hell, even a guy with a steady job that doesn't commit gratuitous acts of violence against his fellow citizens? I fear no matter how far we lower the bar, this man will not pass it.
Maybe I'm naive, but I reread "The Diamond Age" recently and I had a lot of respect for the brand of justice dispensed by Judge Fang. For example, Judge Fang would probably not order the death penalty on criminals like this[2] (again, graphic video) because they are young and probably much more malleable. But they need a punishment that is strongly focused on rehabilitation. In our justice system they will be sent to a prison that will only harden their criminal tendencies.
That sounds like a person CREATED by prisons. Probably became MORE criminal after serving his first term. That much more criminal after the second. Etc.. etc.
We mightn't even need the non-prison punishments were it not for our ... prisons??? Which is ... weird to think about.
A lot of our crime may not even be committed if our prisons were not tantamount to "Crime College for Criminals"?
In Russia you get raped and not reported. There is a whole caste system in prisons here.
Congress ordered studies to be started years ago and updated periodically to determine what's really going on... somehow I suspect you've not seen even a single one of the resultant studies though.
The most recent investigation I looked at was http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report.html which, based on academic studies suggest that 22% of male prisoners have been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated.
That report also noted that official figures often massively under-report incidence of abuse.
Anyway, you only have to watch US comedies, including those aimed at young people to see that prison rape is considered a joke, and a tame one at that. That's what I mean by 'cultural acceptance'.
How do you people dream up such turgid statements?
And if those circumstances and the fact that the government isd doing that is widely known by the public and there is no substantial political demand for change of government action, that demonstrates public acceptance, as well.
See what the recent CA prisoners on hunger strike are demanding. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-five-most-impo...
Good general overview of prison labor:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/04/04/prison-labor....
More detailed account of prison labor in Nevada regarding casinos and construction.
http://vltp.net/casinos-prison-labor-strange-bedfellows/
The slave market:
You can even get slave labor to operate your call center:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition
"Own nationals: Some countries, such as Brazil,[6] the Czech Republic,[7] France,[8][9] Germany,[10] Japan,[11] the People's Republic of China,[12] the Republic of China (Taiwan)[13] forbid extradition of their own nationals. These countries often have laws in place that give them jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by or against citizens. By virtue of such jurisdiction, they prosecute and try citizens accused of crimes committed abroad as if the crime had occurred within the country's borders (see e.g. trial of Xiao Zhen)."
US once considered the example of liberty, free speach and enterpreneurship is now subject to the consequences of extremas in all fields. Thanks to lobbying and subversion of regulating institutions.
Russia has crumbled under the weight of it's central administrative policy, US starts to crumble under the pressure of people's greediness and disabling of regulating structures as well as loss of sense of morale.
But in fairness, let's note that declaring bankruptcy does not nullify student loans, so it is somewhat like an indentured servitude once you've got them.
For the past 4 years, I mostly worked on what I could, not what I really wanted...
Happily, sometimes there was a overlap, but how it is not slavery?
I cannot quit. I cannot choose what I will work with (mostly, every time I was without a job, I had to accept whatever offer came by, the few times I tried to be picky I ended even more indebted to buy food). I cannot live where I want... And so on.
With some employers, I did feel owned, because even if they did not knew I was in deep debt, they could push me to do whatever they wanted, just with a small treat of dismissal, because I CANNOT afford be dismissed, my debt payment is way above the country average wage, and for the last years I've been living reaching the end of each month slighly indebted or with a zero balance in the bank.
I dread the day I suffer some accident, near my home people ignore the red light a lot, and I think if I ever get hit by a car, I don't have money to pay medical expenses. (my parents are also in debt, partly by their incredible education expense they had with me, sometimes taking loans they knew they could not pay just to pay for my schooling).
Right now I am co-founder in a startup, and every time our cash starts to run low, conflicts flare up quickly, because the pressure becomes immense, it generates lots of instability, and I already lost two relationships over this (ie: not over having a startup, but having those debts and financial instability and extreme dependance on employers).
Also, your debts are inherited, mandatorily, specially if you have spouse, kids, or parents (in the order. if you die, your spouse will get at least 50% of your debts, if you don't have one, then your kids will be forced to take at least 50% of your debts, if you don't have kids, then your parents... the other 50% must be inherited by someone too, but you can choose with your will who will be the unlucky person).
And because a side effect of inheritance laws, the government can (although I never heard about it doing it) give your debts to a third cousin even.
Also, another thing is that here in Brazil student debts commonly have as collateral the assets of a third party (in fact all sorts of debts here work that way, except for companies), so if I DO fail to pay my debt, then it will pass to my parents, that are already indebted and will certainly fail to pay it, then their stuff will be taken (and I don't have anything to be taken, my 3 most valuable assets are my laptop, my phone, and my glasses).
EDIT to joseflavio: Your link is about law in Portugual, not Brazil, note the currency mentioned is Euro, not Reais.
EDIT2 to joseflavio: I got curious enough, to see if there is anything analogous in Brazil, and indeed there is, by another name "renuncia".
The law (I will skip the non-interesting part) about "renuncia":
Art. 1.807. O interessado em que o herdeiro declare se aceita, ou não, a herança, poderá, vinte dias após aberta a sucessão, requerer ao juiz prazo razoável, não maior de trinta dias, para, nele, se pronunciar o herdeiro, sob pena de se haver a herança por aceita.
Art. 1.812. São irrevogáveis os atos de aceitação ou de renúncia da herança.
Art. 1.813. Quando o herdeiro prejudicar os seus credores, renunciando à herança, poderão eles, com autorização do juiz, aceitá-la em nome do renunciante.
§ 1o A habilitação dos credores se fará no prazo de trinta dias seguintes ao conhecimento do fato.
§ 2o Pagas as dívidas do renunciante, prevalece a renúncia quanto ao remanescente, que será devolvido aos demais herdeiros.
Thus in short: You have 20 days to renounce your inheritance.
If your are inheriting debts and renounce your inheritance, your creditors can sue to force you still inherit the debt and pay them, and after the debt is paid, the "good" parts of the inheritance get successfully renounced and go to someone else, thus attempting to renounce a debt only results in punishment, since you still get the debt, but DON'T get the good parts of the inheritance.
I'm sure this policy is detrimental to class mobility and entrepreneurship, but I'd be interested to know if it even promotes a more profitable loan market than in countries with legal bankruptcy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130730-705372.html
Banks here are breaking their own profit record for several years in a row, while the economy is almost in recession (last year 0.9% in growth, inflation currently 6.7%, also credit card rate is around 450% year.
Last time I had to take a loan with the bank (instead of temporary negative balance) I paid 100% on a 6 month loan.
The negative balance pays 10%/mo of your current balance (thus if you never repays it, you get a rate of 300% year)
EDIT: "what do you think?" is a real question, I don't have data on other countries to know how much loan banks profit there.
http://insolvenciapessoal.com/dividas-para-os-herdeiros/ (in Portuguese)
I live in France, and as far as I know, it works the same way. In Brazil your main residence is even protected (if you live on it)... only my 2c, but in in my opinion, US is still the scariest.
But I got curious enough, to see if there is anything analogous in Brazil, and indeed there is, by another name "renuncia".
The law (I will skip the non-interesting part) about "renuncia":
Art. 1.807. O interessado em que o herdeiro declare se aceita, ou não, a herança, poderá, vinte dias após aberta a sucessão, requerer ao juiz prazo razoável, não maior de trinta dias, para, nele, se pronunciar o herdeiro, sob pena de se haver a herança por aceita.
Art. 1.812. São irrevogáveis os atos de aceitação ou de renúncia da herança.
Art. 1.813. Quando o herdeiro prejudicar os seus credores, renunciando à herança, poderão eles, com autorização do juiz, aceitá-la em nome do renunciante.
§ 1o A habilitação dos credores se fará no prazo de trinta dias seguintes ao conhecimento do fato.
§ 2o Pagas as dívidas do renunciante, prevalece a renúncia quanto ao remanescente, que será devolvido aos demais herdeiros.
Thus in short:
You have 20 days to renounce your inheritance.
If your are inheriting debts and renounce your inheritance, your creditors can sue to force you still inherit the debt and pay them, and after the debt is paid, the "good" parts of the inheritance get successfully renounced and go to someone else, thus attempting to renounce a debt only results in punishment, since you still get the debt, but DON'T get the good parts of the inheritance.
Art. 1.792. O herdeiro não responde por encargos superiores às forças da herança; incumbe-lhe, porém, a prova do excesso, salvo se houver inventário que a escuse, demostrando o valor dos bens herdados.
Free translation:
Section 1792. The heir is not liable for charges greater than the forces of inheritance: it must, however, provide evidence of excess, unless there is inventory to excuse himself, demonstrating the value of inherited assets.
Although you must still prove yourself that the debt exceeds the assets, this can get very problematic in some cases (like I guy I know that AFTER he died, people found out that beside his official wife and his 2 previous divorced wives, he also had 5 other "marriages", and the 7 women did not knew each other, he had children with all of them, and each one thought he owned a different business... this case is still in inventary hell, but last I heard of it, they concluded each child will inherit 10 million BRL each plus lands... but they don't started yet counting the debts... also, all of the women were correct, he never lied about what he owned, only he never presented anyone with the full truth, to each one he presented himself owning a different business he really owned, I wonder how the guy pulled that off)
He isn't a teenager who downloaded a song, he isn't a security researcher who was just playing around, he isn't a whistleblower who wanted to protect our privacy by informing us, they didn't ran a service to help oppressed people reach out; they are bank robbers, top notch bank robbers if they compromised so many accounts.
Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.
Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity.
In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life.
Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio.
I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.
The fact that our legal system routinely doles out punishments that are not in proportion to the crime is quite reason enough to deny extradition.
I'd like to think that I would be rational enough to maintain that position even if I was the victim of such a crime.
There's an inherent limit to how much financial punishment you can mete out, after all. You can permanently impoverish a person, and that's it. Many people are already permanently impoverished, in which case a financial crime would basically be no risk, with a large potential reward if they can get away with it.
Edit: "deter all financial crimes" is poor wording. Of course you can't deter all crimes, and as such that shouldn't be a goal. What I'm really trying to get at is that such a punishment system would give you a large number of people for whom it's not really a punishment at all, or at least not a very significant one.
I suspect many if not most of the victims would feel the same. There is a real consideration to make to victims who don't want to be part of or reason for any cruel punishments.
Most people - especially in America these days - live in tenuous circumstances, and "[finding] my bank account empty" would quite literally ruin their lives. For most people, that would be many times the provocation needed for them to feel justified in ruining a thief's life in exchange.
Editing bec I can't reply somehow:
The case you have was "tenuous circumstances"
I myself have experienced having my account cleaned out of a couple of thousand dollars (stolen/compromised ATM), and the bank had my funds back in 3 days. Pretty sure I won't be ruined in that time frame. Anybody who has 250k in the bank isn't living in tenuous Circumstances.
FDIC requires the government to pay you back for the insured (250k) amount but sets no timetable for this repayment. Simply, "as soon as possible." I've had several attorneys (that's what I get for marrying one) tell me explicitly that although the official FDIC policy is "as soon as possible" - which, granted, if you're a single point of failure (i.e., a small local bank) can be as soon as a few days - can be extended effectively indefinitely in cases where, for instance, a major bank fails, or several major banks are robbed concurrently.
Granted, you could sue for this, since you could argue that perhaps they're not moving as fast as they can be, but at that point you're not going to have the money to sue them with.
Now, if you have a solid job and money across several accounts under banks that are orthogonal with respect to being swindled, hey, you're OK. You'll hold out for the eventual repayment. If, on the other hand, you're in the same situation as most Americans these days, you had better hope that when you need the FDIC you're one of the exceptional few rather than part of a mob, because you could very well see your life derailed before you get your safety net back.
If someone didn't have family to fall back in, an empty bank account would literally ruin the life of the average American.
Here, the banks offer very limited credits, expecially to foreigners like me. Public health care and education is not great, to put it nicely. My family depends on my income but a bankruptcy would mean that I would lose my license to practise my profession, and so too my income would take a dip.
So, losing cash could mean that I would loose my profession, my home, car etc. There would be no more nice kindergartens, no nanny, no cleaning lady or private doctors for a long while. We would eat less, drink less, travel less etc. But that doesn't mean that my life would be ruined.
You're talking about eating less. You're talking about still being able to travel. I'm talking about a country where roughly one-sixth of its population would literally starve if this happened to them.
The first 4 you mention do not magically come for free in the U.S. You might retain the 5th, if you already had a job, and though you were nice enough to mention 'no physical injury' you somehow neglected 'no psychological injury'... though I can see why, since it would be untrue.
All of these things can hinge on having money.
2) If you're not in poverty, and your employer direct-deposits, all of the above, only you can change your direct deposit destination faster.
You could argue that e.g. 5 years is not enough. But I think it would be hard to argue against the idea that 95 years is far too much, when it's twice as much as the maximum you can get for deliberately killing a person in my home state, as long as you didn't plan the killing in advance.
I understand that he's facing 95 years because the sentences potentially add together. Well, that's part of the problem.
American prosecutors want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to threaten people with "95 years in prison!" But at the same time they want to show that they don't punish people with undue harshness.
Is a foreign country supposed to ignore the maximum penalty an extradition candidate faces, and go with the particulars of how the US justice system usually works, especially when prosecutors will happily threaten people with the theoretical maximum whenever it suits them?
Unless you're of the opinion that public defenders and defense lawyers are simpletons who can barely figure out how to breathe, it doesn't matter what the prosecution tries to say to the accused.
You can say it's all for show as part of a "trial by media", but defense attorneys are just as eager to do that, and such a thing has no bearing on the legal process anyways.
Foreign countries should worried about the maximum conceivable penalty (which is even higher than plausible, but still much lower than the theoretically possible).
These threats matter a lot. I mean, unless you're of the opinion that prosecutors are simpletons who can barely figure out how to breathe, they must serve some purpose given that they keep being made!
Prosecutors want to use massive potential sentences to browbeat defendants into waiving their right to a trial. But, surprise! Some people take you at your word, and make other decisions based on threats like that.
Again: the fact that the massive potential sentence isn't realistic is a bug, not a feature, in the US system.
That imprecision in sentencing certainly annoys the technical minded, but it is a feature compared to what happened before, where you sentence depended much more on the judge you were assigned and how the judge felt that day, than on what you were actually convicted of.
Certainly most defendants do plea bargain, but you have provided no explanation why the reason plea bargains occur is related to the maximum sentence quoted for a press release. It is, I would say, just as likely that the reason people take the plea is that even the realistic sentence under the Federal sentencing guidelines, as explained by the defense counsel, is still harsh enough that the plea bargain represents a better deal than playing the acquittal lottery.
Obviously the prosecutor will point out that the maximum theoretical sentence is something completely different, that's their job in the adversarial legal system. If it helps in securing a conviction it's mission accomplished. Likewise it is the job of the defense to explain that the likely sentence is something way different, that a given plea bargain is a joke, that evidence can be thrown out in court, and that entire cases can be thrown out on technicalities.
I'm not sure why you would feel better if defendants went through a kangaroo court where justice is dispensed within days and the convicted are forgotten just as quickly, but I certainly don't see how that would lead to any decrease in wrongful convictions.
Someday we'll give up on this war on drugs, and that will help with the backlog, but even then plea bargains will be more beneficial than harmful to defendants.
What the hell? Where did I express a preference for anything like this?
Yes I would. Anything more would be completely disproportionate and not constructive. 5 years is a very severe sentence for a non-violent crime by someone who is not an acute threat to the safety of others.
I don't have any thirst for medieval revenge. I would be more interested in ways to get my money back.
And I would not want to be in any way responsible for the culprit to suffer the human rights abuse of the American prison system. If it were up to me, my country would never, ever extradite to the US.
I believe it's important to consider prison as rehabilitation, not as vengeance. The tone of your consideration makes it clear that you'd want him in jail only for vengeance - it's not up to you to "be okay" with the offender's sentence. All that matters is that it is appropriate.
Depending on the prison, I would be okay with a criminal spending only five years for every degree of murder save for first degree.
I can assure you, you'll get over your bank account being empty. Yes, I know, you could lose a substantial amount of money. But there is insurance for these sorts of things (despite it not being foolproof), and I don't think you fully consider how five years of prison can change you.
The popular portrayal of a bank robbery is dramatic but outdated.
So you're willing to give up your amassed fortune to the people who have had their bank accounts wiped clean because of these scumbags, then?
2) It's not my responsibility to right crimes. However, what I do have an opinion on is not calling criminals scumbags for committing white collar crimes. I get lives can be ruined, yes. But you effectively crucify them and remove all context from the crime by just looking at them, sneering and judging them as worthless human beings.
My second point is not meant to imply I'm a feel-good hippie who encourages free love and understanding. They are at fault for what they did. However, they are also a product of their environment(s), and retribution is groundless. Rehabilitation is both more generous and productive for all parties included.
Given the mess the American legal system is just about anybody can be sentenced for something so the only question is how many slaves/criminals do we need?