Ten weeks in prison for convicted fare dodger

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the British Transport Police press release:

TEN WEEKS IN PRISON FOR PROLIFIC ^FARE DODGER^ KINGS CROSS / YORK

A woman who defrauded a train operator to travel between Kings Cross and York has been sentenced to 10 weeks in prison.

Olga Krasnosielska (23) of Cheltenham Place, Ealing, pleaded guilty to nine separate charges of fraud ^ totalling almost ^3,500 - when she appeared at Westminster Magistrates^ Court on Friday, 4 November 2011.

The court heard how, between March and October this year, Krasnosielska used a debit card to purchase tickets on East Coast services on a number of occasions, despite knowing that funds were not available.

PC Amanda Humphrey, the BTP^▸ (British Transport Police) investigating officer, said: ^Ultimately it is the legitimate fare paying passengers who end up bearing the brunt of the cost of those dishonest people who think they can get away without paying ^ I welcome the sentence handed down to Krasnosielska.

^This case was an example of real collaborative working between the London North and North Eastern areas of British Transport Police and the court has also sent out a clear message that fraud on this scale is completely unacceptable.^

Edit note: Images now removed due to expiry of copyright permission. CfN

[Tim]

10 months in prison will cost the law-abiding another ^40k in addition to the cost of the fares dodged.

Is this sensible?   

Prision should be for violent people (will they be releasing a violent person to make space for Olgo?).  An economic crime like fraud should have an economic penalty (such as unpaid work)

[SapperPsmith]

Understand the view about prison but I think this is a welcome deterrent

[JayMac]

10 months in prison will cost the law-abiding another ^40k in addition to the cost of the fares dodged.

Just to point out, the sentence was 10 weeks. Of which the offender will serve only half unless she seriously breaches prison rules during those 5 weeks.

And as a general observation, not speculation in this particular case, sentencing and the decision to imprison can be affected by all sorts of factors. There's the possibility of previous offences, previous community punishments, pre-sentence reports from the Probation Service, what happened whilst on bail and so on.

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

if she stole your wallet after observing you enter your pin at a cash machine and drained your account would you still feel the same?

[Tim]

if she stole your wallet after observing you enter your pin at a cash machine and drained your account would you still feel the same?

I would want her severly punished, but not if it involved my pocket being picked again (this time legally) to pay for her prison place.

If there was the slightest bit of violence involved then I have no problem with banging someone up, but an economic crime deserves an economic punishment.

If I was the thief, I'd have to ask myself what would I prefer, a few weeks in prision for ^3,500 might sound rather good value.  6 months unpaid work less so.

The key problem here is that prison is used for non-violent offenders because there isn't always an alternative that is sufficiently punishing and sufficiently detering.  The solution is to have a stricter and more punishing community payback scheme so that it is no longer a soft option, rather than use jail when as the only option when there is a legitimate need to "get tough"

[Andy W]

"The court heard how, between March and October this year, Krasnosielska used a debit card to purchase tickets on East Coast services on a number of occasions, despite knowing that funds were not available."

How did the debit card work if there were no funds available?

Surely there is also something wrong with the system if a debit card transaction is processed presumably to be reversed later on.

[inspector_blakey]

I would assume it's because (and correct me if I'm wrong here...) the tickets were purchased on-board and the Avantix^▸ (Ticket Issuing System used on board trains) machines can't dial up and authorize online, only check the PIN and store the card details so that the transactions can be actioned later.

[Brucey]

Could be tickets purchase on the train (or somewhere else) where they are not authorised online?

Although I'd have expected the system to ban the card number after a certain number of failed payments.

Edit: inspector_blakey beat me to it

[Tim]

That must be how she did it.  The machines ought to contain a black-list of banned cards though to stop this kind of thing happening repeatedly. 

[broadgage]

Maybe the fraudster had more than one duff card, rather than repeatedly useing the same one ?
I know that the report refers to "a" card, but it might mean "a card for each dishonest ticket purchase"

Prison though costly for society is IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) more of a deterent than unpaid work, which is often considered almost a let off.

A prison sentance is arguably OTT^▸ (Open Train Times website) for a single theft, but this was repeated.

[devon_metro]

Surely the account would just become overdrawn and it would be the banks problem to get the money?

[Andy W]

Surely the account would just become overdrawn and it would be the banks problem to get the money?

Yes I would have thought that too. There was a previous thread about on-train payments being declined for people with 'basic' banks accounts so the technology must be there to block transactions.

[Tim]

Surely the account would just become overdrawn and it would be the banks problem to get the money?

not how it works.  If the card isn't authorised on-line, it is just like writting a duff cheque.  The bank can choose to honour it and place their customer overdrawn (and if the overdraft is pre-arranged that is what you would expect them to do), but the bank can equally well decide to decline the payment.

[Tim]

Prison though costly for society is IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) more of a deterent than unpaid work, which is often considered almost a let off.

That is the problem.  Make unpaid work tougher and it wouldn't be seen as a let off or soft option.  You have to remeber that every non-violent offender you send to jail means one less space for a thug who really needs to be locked up.