« Thursday's Three Burning Legal Questions |
Main
| Monday's Three Burning Legal Questions »
Things That Exist, Vol. 5: 'Substitute Criminals'
I feel like I'm on my computer constantly, poring through hundreds of feeds and stories daily, spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of legal blogs and information you deserve. But I definitely miss a lot of things that everyone else seems to know about -- the type of things where I can only scratch my head and say, "Really?!? They have that? Never heard of it."
Today's thing I never knew existed: Substitute Criminals
On Slate (via WSJ Law Blog), Geoffrey Sant explains how the "substitute criminal" (aka "replacement convict") concept is already at work in China. Let's say you are a wealthy person in China who has "done the crime." Wouldn't you rather hire a body double or stand-in to "do the time" for you? According to Slate, substitute criminals can be hired to go to jail for you in China for as little as $31/day. Bargain!!!
Slate states that
In 2009, a hospital president who caused a deadly traffic accident hired an employee’s father to “confess” and serve as his stand-in. A company chairman is currently charged with allegedly arranging criminal substitutes for the executives of two other companies. In another case, after hitting and killing a motorcyclist, a man driving without a license hired a substitute for roughly $8,000. The owner of a demolition company that illegally demolished a home earlier this year hired a destitute man, who made his living scavenging in the rubble of razed homes, and promised him $31 for each day the “body double” spent in jail. In China, the practice is so common that there is even a term for it: ding zui. Ding means “substitute,” and zui means “crime”; in other words, “substitute criminal.”
A Chinese police officer added that "[i]f somebody is powerful, there’s a good chance they can make this happen. Spend some money and remain free.” Check out the full Slate article here.
Posted by Bruce Carton on August 3, 2012 at 03:49 PM | Permalink
| Comments (2)