I subscribe to Bertrand Russell's hypothesis that the earth was created five minutes ago. Events that you remember do not necessarily have to have happened; memories were put in our minds. Impossible to prove wrong.
Based on the grammar and spelling mistakes in your post, I suspect that your written communication skills might be holding you back. It's quite easy to paste those paragraphs into ChatGPT and say "rewrite this." It will provide you with a clear and error-free version. I recommend doing this for every email you send. It can significantly increase the respect you receive from both your current coworkers and potential employers. Even though I have good grammar, I still use it for half the emails I send to see if they can be improved.
This is a slippery slope. These policies had a vast affect on the lives of millions of people. Business were shut down. Schools were closed. People were instructed to stay in their homes for years. Simply saying, "Well, we made our best guess," is absolutely not acceptable. When the government curbs human rights, they have an obligation to weigh and justify the costs with scientific evidence.
What is your suggested approach when there is no (reliable) scientific evidence for any course of action and not enough time to gather such (reliable) evidence? Note that not taking any action is also a decision that, in your framework, requires supporting evidence.
Not taking action doesn't require supporting evidence, and insickness didn't propose a framework in which it does. There is at any moment an infinite number of things you could choose to not be doing. You can't collect evidence for not doing those things, as the amount of evidence required would also be infinite.
Not taking any action is also a decision, and it has to be justified like anything else that will affect the health and lives of millions of people.
You don't need to collect evidence for everything you choose not to be doing, all you need is evidence that the status quo is not worse than any other (known) alternative.
In any case, my point was that you can't make decisions based on evidence when you are faced with a new situation for which there is no (reliable) evidence. In these cases some other approach is needed.
I don't know the Finnish equivalent of this but this is in the neighborhood of negligent homicide in the US. An enterprising prosecutor could probably make a decent case for 2nd degree murder.
This is very clearly in "spend somewhere between 1 and 2 decades turning big rocks into little rocks" territory to my punishment-focused American lizard brain.
This definitely sounds more like it and I am happy to be this week's example of why non-lawyers shouldn't speculate about what a particular crime is or is not :)
What he did is reprehensible. But comments like this are emotively loaded and provoke the ongoing debate around the purpose of jail term. In my opinion, even this length of sentence has a high chance of producing a hardened, bitter criminal with hacking skills.
> even this length of sentence has a high chance of producing a hardened, bitter criminal with hacking skills.
You present this as an argument for a shorter sentence. But from another perspective, it's an argument for never letting him out.
Prison isn't primarily meant to rehabilitate; you are almost certainly right that it will do the exact opposite in this case. Its power to deter is also limited. But what it can do, if we are simply willing to use it for that purpose, is contain dangerous people and prevent them from harming others again by simply not giving them the opportunity to do so.
> Prison isn't primarily meant to rehabilitate; you are almost certainly right that it will do the exact opposite in this case.
Prisons are meant for rehabilitation in Finland, where the case was decided. And the system maintains a lower recidivism rate than the US with a lower incarceration rate + less crime.
It is an argument, although that might count as unusually cruel or disproportionate for a crime like this. Even murderers in Finland are typically pardoned and released after 12-15 years.
> Even murderers in Finland are typically pardoned and released after 12-15 years
What about serial murderers? The damning part—to me—isn’t the crime per se but the repeat offenses.
The Finnish system is famously good at rehabilitating criminals. But what do you do with the edge cases? (I guess our system, which excels at incapacitation and retribution, has its edge cases in the unjustly imprisoned. Put that way, having the edge default to letting out a few incurable criminals from time to time might be the fairer solution.)
> While the maximum prison sentence in Norway is 21 years, the law was amended in 2002 so that, in rare cases, sentences can be extended indefinitely in five-year increments if someone is still considered a danger to the public.
> Put that way, having the edge default to letting out a few incurable criminals from time to time might be the fairer solution.
Blackstone's ratio[0]
He's a scumbag, but the folks that didn't secure that data were also complicit (although unintentionally). I know that the company went belly-up, but I'd suggest the company that wrote and sold the software also shares culpability, as they likely sold it as some kind of magic beans.
There's really no substitute for not collecting the information in the first place, but in this community, that's heresy.
Not looking to argue directly about the punishment, but I think it's quite clear that this individuals is ALREADY a hardened, bitter criminal with hacking skills and needs no assistance on that score.
Under Finnish law he isn’t - his prior crimes were a long time ago (caught anyway), and largely afaict while he was a kid. Most countries don’t treat children as adults, and in many - as here - crimes committed as a child get cleared.
I get that if you’re used to the US criminal justice system you believe the goal is to punish people as long as possible - with a side order of slave labor and electoral disenfranchisement - but all of the statistics show that that policy has worse outcomes across the board. It has higher costs, higher rates of recidivism, and lower trust in the judicial system - which encourages an us vs them mentality that further increases crime rates. Not to mention that if a child spends a decade in prison they’re coming out the other end with little to know ability to earn a non-crime living afterwards.
Other criminals can teach him how to not get caught or recruit him into larger organizations. Prison is like a startup incubator for gangs. When you put a bunch of people with similar interests in one place it's a great networking opportunity.
> From a post war crime boom and relatively high incarceration rates, Finnish prisons have emerged to be counted among the most humane correctional facilities in the world and yet, recidivism is very low compared to international standards.
Sounds similar to that of Norway which is known for its kind/compassionate treatment of prisoners.
Removing people from society is what we do when they do these kind of terrible things to others. 6 years of removal isn't enough. The debate you refer to is a separate thing.
This sounds a little like an appeal to tradition, unless I'm misunderstanding you. Removal from society is absolutely one of the intended purposes of prison, but as with all traditions it must be open to challenge and debate.
Rehabilitation is all the rage around these parts, but there are other reasons for prisons. One of the purposes of prison is to protect the public from dangerous people. Another aspect is the instructive element; you send a message to the rest of society about what kind of behavior will or won't be tolerated.
This man should be executed. It would be a fitting punishment for both of those reasons and more. He caused at least one suicide and victimized tens of thousands. This is a crime that calls for the death penalty.
New York City had laws on the books until 2017 banning dancing in bars that don't have a "caberet license." I remember going out to bars and seeing signs on the wall that said "No dancing." We thought it was a joke until they came up to us and told us to stop dancing. Places could get hefty fines. It took a big activist push to get the law repealed.
Vancouver until fairly recently had the same thing. I remember a hostel downtown that had a boisterous bar where one side had the license and one side didn’t for some arcane reason and they had a three foot fence with a swinging door separating the two sides. Hostel stuff still tried to happen, one night I was there and a guy stood up and started playing saxophone and a bunch of people started dancing and the poor staff had to go into panic mode trying to get everyone to stop.
>All applicants for a cabaret license had to be fingerprinted; to provide extensive financial records; to meet specific zoning, surveillance, physical security, fire, building, electrical, health, and record keeping requirements; and to pay the fees associated with each compliance.
>In 2016, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs claimed there were then 118 cabaret licenses in a city of 25,100 licensed food service establishments.
> If kids and young adults lose access to piracy they will develop other interest
Entertainment is a lot more fungible than these companies realize. Pour cold water on movies and people will watch TV. Dampen that and people will play video games. Make me hate Reddit and I'll go to youtube. Start forcing ads on youtube and I'll go to instagram. etc.
