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Questions tagged [punishment]

44 questions
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How do people publicly admit to criminal activity and not typically get arrested?

I've noticed that people on YouTube and even on TV would sometimes say things like "I used to take lots of coke a few years ago" or "I used to smoke weed daily until this and that" or "Yea, I smoke weed every once in a while," or "I used to pirate…
Jack
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Why are people sentenced to prison for terms longer than life?

Albert Morake was sentenced to 1,535 years in prison. How can a person be sentenced to more than 1 life imprisonment?
Micaela Dorothy
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Do US presidential pardons include the cancellation of financial punishments?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/anthony-levandowski-pardoned-after-stealing-trade-secrets-from-google.html says: Anthony Levandowski pardoned after stealing trade secrets from Google In August, Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison for…
Franck Dernoncourt
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Can punishments be weakened if evidence was collected illegally?

Suppose police are investigating a burglary case. Under law, COVID-19 contact tracing data can only be used for contact tracing and nothing else. However a team decides to analyze the data anyway to collect more information. It ends up playing the…
dfc2136
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Are there any provisions for economic inequality in legal punishments?

Suppose we have two persons, person-A and person-B and let's say they both commit the same crime and go to jail. The law, to my understanding, applies uniformly/punishes uniformly disregarding their economic class, status etc. But is this really…
Clemens Bartholdy
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Life in prison is already long enough, why add 30 years?

Saw the original sentence for Adnan Syed and I couldn't understand why it's life AND 30 years. What does that mean?
rddead
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Are the relative levels of fines and imprisonment disproportionate?

Most non-violent crimes are punishable by fine or imprisonment. But the maximum term of imprisonment has often struck me as far out of line with the maximum fine. For example, even if I am a minimum-wage worker I could pay the maximum fine in a…
feetwet
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Is stealing a key equivalent to stealing whatever it unlocks?

My understanding is that if a person commits a theft, the theft is considered more or less 'severe' depending upon the value of the item(s) burglarized. If this is true, how would that work for an item like keys, whose extrinsic value I'd assume is…
TravMatth
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Do public schools have the authority to fine parents money for being late?

My friend has a child in elementary school, and he goes to a public school. Apparently, at the end of the school day, if the parents are late picking up their kids, the school charges them $10/minute that they are late. So, if a parent gets caught…
Yurelle
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Can I be subjected to physical punishment by the police in the US as long as it is outside criminal proceeding?

In Ingraham v. Wright, the US Federal Supreme Court ruled that it had "limited the application of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual language to criminal punishment". Can I be subjected to a "cruel and unusual" punishment by the police, as…
robertspierre
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Are Indian police allowed by law to slap citizens?

I have seen a few instances where the Indian police slap citizens as a fast punishment. Is that explicitly allowed by law, or just tolerated in practice?
Franck Dernoncourt
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Is there a legal system or theory where punishment is proportional to the probability of an offence?

In common criminal law in order for a defendant to be punished, they must be found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Hence, there is a threshold for the probability of guilt, beyond which the punishment is proportional to the offence and/or…
Dr. Thomas C. King
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Is it commonly legal to permit life-sentenced mass murderers to procreate?

Swedish news reports that a convicted mass-murderer who is serving a life sentence has during his time in prison become a father of 3 or 4 new children. Is that a common practice? It surprises me that the legal system should accept that kind of…
Niklas Rosencrantz
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Is escaping prison a crime?

Is it actually illegal to escape from a prison or will it just have effect on increased sentence in practice? I heard something that in Sweden where I live it is not illegal to escape, but is that no matter what you did?
Niklas Rosencrantz
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Can you get more than 21 years prison in total in Norway for the sum of two completely unrelated crimes?

This should go without saying, but I'm asking this out of sheer curiosity, not for any practical reasons lol. The maximum prison time one can get for any particular crime in Norway is 21 years. This also applies if one murders multiple people,…
Fiksdal
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