Who deserves the harsher punishment?

[John Dibble]

They are both thieves, and neither of them actually killed anyone in the given scenarios. So, if I was to punish one more than the other, I would look to see which one's crime influenced more people.

A robbed one store for a few hundred dollars. B robbed several people for several million dollars.

Ultimately, A's crime won't change much. The money will likely be covered by insurance, and the people at the BK will get on with their lives. B's crime on the other hand will likely affect the livelihoods of many, many people, even if the money is insured, which it likely isn't.

So I'd say B.

[John Dibble]

Is a noose hanging on a black coworkers office door worse than stealing $10 in office supplies?  I think it is, you guys don't seem to.

Straw man, and really not comparable to the situations presented in this thread. Both of these are really localized, compared to the situations presented where one is localized and the other isn't.

It's true that A may have killed the clerk, but he didn't. We can't charge someone for something they may have done, otherwise we'd all be criminals. Certainly armed robbery adds to the risk of the situation escalating though, and so we do increase the charge from "robbery" to "armed robbery" and the punishment increases accordingly for the reasons you presented. Criminal A should receive a greater punishment than someone who attempted a robbery without a weapon. That doesn't mean Criminal B shouldn't receive a greater punishment than Criminal A.

Criminal B's crime is not localized - it has far reaching effects. Stealing millions of dollars affects the world far more than stealing $10 of office supplies. First off it will harm multiple companies and individuals, potentially putting many people out of work and into the poorhouse. How many families will that damage or destroy? How many Criminal A's will be created because they lost their money to the scam and become desperate? How many of those new A's will actually end up killing the clerk? Is the harm done to Criminal B's victims any less real because a gun wasn't involved? As I see it, Criminal B will likely have done more harm in the grand scheme of things than Criminal A, so his punishment should be more severe. It certainly shouldn't be any less.