161–170 of 276 posts
Every time some CEO issues an apology i can't help but not take it seriously because it reminds of following scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
All the PO lawyers rewriting witness statements must go to jail. All the prosecutors must go to jail for negligence and malpractice.
Odd that so often here on HN we talk about how prisons don't work, don't deter crime, don't rehabilitate... yet whenever some CEO or high level official is caught in malfeasance, we insist that "sending them to jail" is the only proper response.
But I think it's more nuanced than that. I don't think it's hypocritical to believe that some crimes are better handled with mental health care or drug treatment programs than prison, while also believing that people who knowingly send people to jail under false pretenses should themselves spend some time there.
Also consider that sometimes people think that others should be punished. If my neighbor goes to jail because they like cocaine, and just had some around the house (and weren't dealing), I don't think I'm going to sit back and be all like, "wow, that person had it coming, glad they're getting punished for ::gasp:: having some powdery substance at home, the horror". But if my neighbor goes to jail for murdering my other neighbor, I'm probably fine thinking that a murderer deserves some sort of punishment for what they did.
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Over time, my thoughts on prison have evolved. I no longer consider their purpose to be punishment, but instead simply segregating people from society who refuse to follow the rules of society. The segregation is enough punishment itself, more punishment doesn't need to be heaped on.
And in this case, where the crime is not one of violence , the punishment doesn't need to involve prison. But the people who knowingly did wrong should receive some sort of punishment, even if it is just financial or being barred from their career path.
I prefer to look at it in terms of the harm caused to other people, and how direct that harm is.
* Use illegal drugs? No direct harm to anyone else.
* Deal drugs? Indirect harm to others.
* Put someone in prison for crimes you know they didn't commit? Direct harm to others. (And on top of that, abuse of the trust that the public has put in you, in allowing you to have that power over others.)
The magnitude of harm should also factor in, but I think that's a discussion for another day.
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It’s pretty impressive, right? I don’t think if you took random New Yorkers and dumped them into that same situation they would have achieved the same outcomes.
you don't think other groups would have fought for survival?
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Yes totally but shouldn’t it have been the prosecution that hired forensic accountants in order to, well, prosecute
In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?
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Yes totally but shouldn’t it have been the prosecution that hired forensic accountants in order to, well, prosecute
In the UK, private parties can prosecute people. The Post office was doing this. As a citizen of the USA, this is a completely alien concept to me. How can a corporation put a person in prison?
How material were the post offices “overbooking” of profits by false sales registered via this bug ? How plausible is it that in-fact the internal narrative was that the post office was wildly more profitable than it was, but that they just need to crack down on this minor theft problem that they have via prosecutions while at the same time padding their figures a bit via postmasters money ?
It's worse than that. Post Office investigators got performance-related bonuses for every successful prosecution. They were chomping at the bit to prosecute anyone who showed the slightest discrepancy, and all their Christmases came at once after Horizon was installed. Moral hazard, cobra effect, if all you have is a hammer, etc. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/10/post-office-exec...
"I [Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu's European division] am surprised that that detail was not included in the witness statements given by Fujitsu staff to the Post Office and I have seen some evidence of editing witness statements by others" How does this scandal keep getting worse and worse when the only thing to cover up is a contract for some poorly written software? At this point I'm starting to suspect some u…
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Perhaps, but if they're unstated, what prevents you revising your principles after the fact, to fit your actions? Anyway the UK Fujitsu/Postmaster scandal is about a huge chain of dishonest human behavior, not bugs in software.
Being principled would preclude you from changing those principles to excuse your own bad behavior. Put another way, if you were to do this, then you weren't really principled in the first place, were you? And it's not like people don't say out loud that they are a certain way, and then act against that. There's no magic in principles being explicitly stated.
> There's no magic in principles being explicitly stated.
Sure there is: we can see the audit trail of precisely what principle they claimed to adhere to and, when. For example in this case the defence for Paula Vennells (and other key figures) is going to be very interesting. What if Vennells blames expert advice, or the prosecutors, or Fujitsu?
In England and Wales perverting the course of justice carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. IMHO this would be appropriate for the lawyers who rewrote those witness statements.
witness statements are frequently collaboratively written/edited and then signed by the witness... I don't think collaboration or editing is in itself a crime - the crime is to sign a statement which you know to be untrue or deceiving.