I've been reading a few posts around here and it seems that a lot of people want Mark Karpeles to go to prison and stay there for a very long time. However, even assuming that Mt. Gox was a scam and not a genuine hack, wouldn't it be in the best interests of society if he were allowed to continue his entrepreneurial pursuits and continue developing valuable services using his expertise on programming - with the condition that he use this money to pay his victims?
Putting someone in prison turns them into a drain on society's resources. The average cost of incarceration for federal inmates in 2011 was almost $30,000 per year which is paid for using taxpayers' money. For someone like Mark Karpeles, it would make far more economic sense to utilize their valuable intellectual skills for good rather than evil.
Same goes for hackers too. In fact, with hackers, many governments have already realized this and already do employ hackers as security experts. There are plenty of cases where hackers were able to escape punishment provided that they work for the government. For example, there was a hacker called
AKILL who was caught by the New Zealand Government. He was able to escape conviction under the condition that he accepts a job offer by the police as a professional security consultant:
New Zealand police offered Akill a job for his unique ability, the head of e-crimes lab said he was the top of his field.
He had to pay £5,500 for the damages, but didnt record his conviction.
This week the court case came to an end with Owen managing to dodge a conviction. Instead he will have to pay US$11,000 in costs and damages (even though he reportedly earned US$32,000 during his crime spree). He will also work with the local police to help crack down on online criminal activity.
