According to this article, a family in Coventry, England, has been tried and convicted of theft after withdrawing, over a period of time, £134,410 from a malfunctioning teller machine.
Here are some of the relevant details (note: the dollar conversion figure is in Australian dollars, not US):
What caused me to put this in GD was a comment, further down the page, by the journalist or commentator who wrote the article:
The author then makes a foray into amateur psychology and ethics in an attempt to explain why many people view theft like this more lightly than most types of theft.
I was just wondering what people thought of:
a) the theft itself
b) the sentences the family received
c) the author’s argument that, because they are opportunists rather than regular criminals, they should get a slap on the wrist
d) anything else that comes to mind in this case
P.S. I know that we’ve debated similar issues at least once before, but i thought this was worth doing again.
Theft is wrong. Period. Unless there is some extraordinary circumstance (i.e. someone will be hideously maimed or die unless the item is stolen), then theft is wrong.
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That’s it? Just a year for stealing over 130,000 pounds?
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So what? Their “break” is that they don’t get hit with a breaking and entering charge (or whatever the UK equivilant is). A slap on the wrist for stealing over 130,000 pounds just because they didn’t do it violently? Puh-leez.
Bottom line, ask yourself this question: If you accidently left your front door open and someone walked in and took $350,000, would you want them to be given a “slap on the wrist” or a real punishment?
Well, it’s clearly theft. The easiest way to think of it as such, IMHO, is that by taking the cash, they were harming others (namely the bank, or the banks insurers, who were going to have to cover the loss). I think the sentences are probably a little stiff. I believe it would have been more productive to have them do community service that approximated the value of what they stole, therefore “working off” the debt, instead of imprisoning them, which costs society money. I believe that prison is either to hold people who may commit future crimes, or who are dangerous. It strikes me that these people, while probably greedy, are not a threat to society. They are criminals, but not violent, it’s that, not the fact that they are “opportunists” which speaks most loudly to me about their jail sentence.
Geez, a slap on the wrist? They obviously knew it was wrong and did it anyways.
The theft itself? I once got 3 $20s out a machine when it should’ve given me $15 (back in the good ol’ days when I was a lad and you could denominations other than $20s out of a machine) It was actually a pain in the butt to give the money back but I just couldn’t keep it.
What makes what they did worse is that they have kids so we’ve got a true lack of morality being passed on to another generation. Grr.
I think the point the author was trying to make was that since most burglars do not receive “custodial sentences” (i.e. go to jail), the family should not as well.
It was wrong.
The penalty is no big deal.*
The author’s argument is specious. Very few murderers are repeat offenders of that crime, so when a person kills their spouse or child or neighbor in a moment of anger, we should give them a slap on the wrist because they are unlikely to do it again?
If the author thinks that 15 months in a prison is too rough for “opportunistic” crime (a plea I will entertain, while not simply agreeing), then give them two or more years of community service. I would accept that a person out paying taxes with a limit on their social life while they perform service to the community might be more beneficial to society than the cost of incarceration, but their “opportunistic” act was more than a one-time event such as picking up a bag that fell out of an armored car. They had to make repeated trips to the ATM rather than reporting the ATM’s problem to the bank when they encountered it. (The story hints that they were not alone in their theft, so, perhaps, the author was swayed by the impression that they were the only ones punished out of a greater number–but, then, it appears that they were also greedier than their neighbors.)
(Plus, daddy thief lost any sympathy I might have scrounged up when he claimed it was a victimless crime, indicating that he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Some genuine penalty should be imposed to demonstrate his error.)
Most burglars should receive custodial sentences, just as this family should.
That said, many prisons are a “university of crime” anyway.
As far as this family and many burglars go, scum is scum. Few appear to learn from the “error of their ways.” The next wallet they see lying on the pavement, or the next unlocked car, or the next easy target, they take it. I don’t have figures to hand, but IIRC reoffending rates for theft crimes are HUGE.
I once met a “professional” house burglar socially, who justified his “career” by saying he was only trying to “provide for his wife and kids.”
And this final comment by the author is simply stupid
unless by “blameless” he means “guilty, but not caught.” I seriously doubt that anyone would be prosecuted for notifying the bank that they were given too much money.
If he means that other “opportunistic” thieves will be deterred in the future, then I say good for them. If they can’t be ethical, they can at least be smart.
When the vending machine gives me an extra candy bar, I figure it makes up for the times it took my money and didn’t give me a candy bar, so I take it.
On a certain level, this appears to make sense. But, as Tom pointed out, there are plenty of violent crimes commited in the heat of the moment by people who:
a) will almost certainly never do it again
and
b) are not dangerous in any general sense of the word
I’m not a hard-ass when it comes to sentencing laws, especially for non-violent crime. In fact, i believe that society would do itself a favour by adopting a broader and more intelligent attitude to non-custodial sentences.
But i’m not crying too many tears of sympathy for this family, either. I’d be willing to bet that when “Britain’s Lord Chief Justice [said] that first-or even second-time burglars should not face custodial sentences,” he wasn’t expecting that most such burglars would get away with enough money to buy a house. While i can’t claim to be a mind-reader, i’d be willing to bet that he was most likely referring to shop-lifters, or house burglars.
More than anything, i think i was also somewhat offended by the author’s implication that “hey, if you were in the same situation, you’d do the same thing.” Well, no i wouldn’t. I can’t deny that there would be a small amount of temptation, but even if my morals didn’t kick in, my common sense sure would. Anyone who thinks they will get away with something like this probably deserves to be locked up for simple stupidity.
BTW, it’s been a while since i had an English bank account, but IIRC it was only possible to take £1000 a day out of the ATM. If that’s still the case, then members of this family made at least 134 separate trips to that teller machine.
The way the California justice system is defining “separate crimes” nowdays, if this crime had been committed out there the family would probably all be in prison for life under the three strikes rule.
To take advantage of an unexpected error by the ATM once would be opportunistic, and maybe defensible. But these people kept going back. They had plenty of time to consider their actions and reflect on the legality and morality of it, and having done so they embarked on what must have been a systematic daily theft.
And to think that they kept doing it and thought they’d never get caught indicates criminal stupidity.
That’s an interesting story, and those people certainly showed the right attitude.
I am, however, a little annoyed at the comment by the bank’s supervisor:
Fuck you. People from the “heartland” are always complaining at being stereotyped by those meanies from the coastal cities; well, stereotyping works both ways, you dumb cow. Don’t assume that i’m a criminal because i happen to live “out East.”
Considering the amount of money they stole, I don’t think that the sentence is all that severe. But I do like the idea of substituting community service. I don’t know if England has the same prison overcrowding problem as we have in the U.S., but I’m always in favor of productive alternatives to incarceration.
In 1992 when Soros bet against the british pound (and the brits tried to prop it up), what essentially happened a direct transfer of funds from the UK Treasury (funded by UK taxpayers of course) directly to Soros’ bank account.
Is that theft? By your definition, all the UK taxpayers were “harmed”, since they’re the ones covering the loss.
Should we put Soros in jail then?
In 1992 when Soros bet against the british pound (and the brits tried to prop it up), what essentially happened a direct transfer of funds from the UK Treasury (funded by UK taxpayers of course) directly to Soros’ bank account.
Is that theft? By your definition, all the UK taxpayers were “harmed”, since they’re the ones covering the loss.
Should we put Soros in jail then?
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I don’t even think the bankers privately thought of the incident as a “theft” or “loss” as much as just “the cost of doing business with an ATM”. Why would they take out an insurance if they didn’t already know such event had a likelyhood to take place? At the insurance company, they most certainly even have a little table with a percentage probability that such event would happen.
At the end of the day, the bankers didn’t “suffer” – they were covered. The insurance company didn’t “suffer” – they profit from premiums (ok, paid by the bank, but with YOUR money, not theirs). In the end, each individual customer of the bank was set back by 0.00000001 of a pound, which they would never be able to redeem anyway.
In the great scheme of things, the total happiness quotient of the world probabily went UP after their withdraws. The Man of course has to arrest them/put them to jail, and we end up with a negative net.
The insurer and bankers should be thankful that the poor couple took their money. If such things would never happen, there would be no insurance companies, and the banks would be paranoid about shouldering all the risks…
