September 24, 2006
Identity Theft--Posner's Reply to Comments
Two of the comments make the excellent point that much, maybe most, identity theft consists in a friend or relative stealing personal identifying information and that such "retail" theft should not be punished nearly as heavily as the kind of professional identity theft that my post focused on. The way to deal with this problem, however, as in the case of most crimes that embrace acts of widely varying gravity, is to set a broad statutory sentencing range--say from fine and probation at the bottom to 25 years in prison at the top--and within the range to promulgate sentencing guidelines based on the magnitude of the particular defendant's conduct and other relevant factors, such as his criminal history.
A recurrent issue in criminal law enforcement is how much responsibility for crime prevention to place on potential victims. In principle, it is always cheaper to deter crime by threat of punishment than to require victims to incur expenses to protect themselves from crime, because maintaining the credibility of the threat is likely to be much cheaper than victim self-protection because the latter requires every potential victim to incur costs to avoid being a victim. (It's the difference between penning danagerous animals in zoos and leaving it to every homeowner to fence out dangerous animals.)
But this is in general rather than in every case. The more costly it is for the state to apprehend and prosecute and punish criminals, the more likely it is for victim self-protection (or some combination of public enforcement and victim self-protection) to be optimal. In this vein, some comments express concern that banks and other vendors are not doing enough to prevent identity theft of their customers because they hope to shift the loss to the customers. I doubt that this is a serious problem, but if it is it may argue for requiring protective measures by the banks and vendors.
One comment puzzles over the fact that bank robbery should be a sucker's crime--that is, that though the expected gain is slight relative to expected punishment costs, the crime is still common. It is a puzzle. But my impression is that bank robberies nowadays are committed mainly by stupid or mentally unstable people, who are tempted by what seems the simplicity of giving a bank teller a threatening note. When as perhaps in that instance deterrence fails, the alternative is incapacitation--long sentences to prevent the bank robber from repeating his crime if it is thought unlikely that he will be deterred by the threat of a longer prison sentence the next time (recidivists get longer sentences, having shown by their first crime that they are less deterrable than the average person).
I greatly enjoyed the comment that pointed out that the first and most consequential identity theft was that of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, by Satan. This is not in Genesis, where Satan is not mentioned, but in later versions of the Fall of Man, notably Milton's Paradise Lost, where Satan takes over the serpent while the latter is sleeping, and convinces Eve that she should eat the forbidden fruit because he, the serpent, did and it did him no harm--indeed, it enabled him to learn to talk!
Posted by Richard Posner at 02:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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>Two of the comments make the excellent point that much, maybe most, identity theft consists in a friend or relative stealing personal identifying information...
The cause of identity theft is only kwown in 50% of cases. In only 26% of cases, the victim knew the identity of the criminal. Here's what the FTC wrote in 2003:
"35% of the 26% of victims who knew the identity (or, in other words, 9% of all victims) said a family member or relative was the person responsible for misusing their personal information...23% of the 26% of all victims who knew the identity of the thief (or 6% of all victims) said the person responsible was someone who worked at a company or financial institution that had access to the victim’s personal information...Of the 26% who knew the identity of the person who took their information, 18% said the thief was a friend, neighbor, or in-home employee, while 16% said the thief was a complete stranger, but the victim later became aware of the thief’s identity. (These figures represent 5% and 4% of all victims respectively.)"
A more interesting approach than penalties would be to limit the ability of businesses to write off identity fraud against their taxes. There's too much of an economic incentive to establish new accounts; if that were blunted with more direct (not tax-subsidized) losses, businesses would do more to prevent the problem.
Posted by Chris Hoofnagle at September 25, 2006 03:59 PM | direct link
He learned to talk and then lost his legs. It's kind of like getting all the miles when a thief steals your credit card. You might be excited at first to see the buildup in your reward points, but the long-term consequences stink, and the miles--much like the snake's voice--don't last.
Posted by Jonathan at September 26, 2006 11:54 PM | direct link
If I might comment on the two posts on DDT by Becker and Posner, it appears to me that the two of you are confusing the way DDT works, and that might explain some of the apprehension in re-introducing it. DDT is very effective as a bug repellant. While it does work to some extent as a pesticide, that is not the best use.
The primary problems it caused was not cancer in humans, but rather the destruction of wildlife, fowl in particular, by softening the eggshells.
I have never heard of it being used as a herbecide.
Spraying on house walls is particularly effective in the repellant mode.
Hope this clarifies some of the issues surrounding the use of DDT.
Posted by Walter Jones at September 27, 2006 10:38 PM | direct link
