[chezlaw]

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No we're just taking into account the chance of them not getting caught.

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Exactly, because they DID get caught already. They committed one crime, and got caught. Now you want to suppose that that they have (or will) commit many more crimes and to include punishment for those crimes in with the one you actually did catch.

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No, the punishment regime is set in advance so anyone consider committing a crime should be deterred by the punishment they will get for that crime if they get caught for that crime.

I'm not quite sure what your issue is here, its seems obvious that if we were considering tax evasion we would be deterred by the punishment if we got caught, and that the larger the punishment the more chance we would need to think we had of getting away with it.

No-one else is involved and its not about deterring us from further tax evasion after we have been caught this time but it is to deter us from the tax evasion we are currently considering.

chez