Woman who stole $70K in grandparent scam should get house arrest, lawyers argue (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 2 days ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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A Calgary woman who participated in a grandparent scam, stealing thousands of dollars from elderly victims, including three who were in their 90s, should get to serve her sentence at home, lawyers argued Friday.

Alana Love Duncan, 48, pleaded guilty in October to seven counts of fraud over $5,000 for crimes that took place over a four-week period in the summer of 2023.

At a sentencing hearing Friday, Duncan’s role was described by prosecutor Don Couturier as the “in-person courier” in a “sophisticated and predatory” scheme. Police have not charged the others involved in the scam.

In total, Duncan and her partners-in-crime stole $70,000 from the seven victims.

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[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

The victim's kids should be given bamboo canes and left alone with her for an hour.

[-] BreadOven@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Well bamboo grows incredibly fast. If someone was restrained in a position under some activity growing bamboo....

[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago

"should serve her sentence at home"

That's a big nope from me.

[-] Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So I get the desire to punish and get revenge, but each inmate costs us $319/day (2024). So jailing her would be spending 116k/yr on this degenerate, with no benefit to society.

We don't need to lock her up for our safety, we just need to heavily monitor her actions and prohibit telecommunications, which is way cheaper. I hope she has a no telecommunications order for at least a couple decades so she can never pull this scam again.

I think once you factor in how much public money we spend on these losers it's a lot easier to see the benefit of house arrest or other, cheaper punitive measures that create the same level of protection for the rest of us and our parents/grandparents.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510001301

[-] Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Conditional sentence is not appropriate for "organized crime" also the sentence CSO can only be less than 2 years. My spite wants the sentence to be longer but I trust the judge.

[-] festus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

While prison is expensive, you're not accounting that the risk of prison can be effective at disincentivizing future crimes which also have a cost to society. So yeah, confining this scammer in prison is expensive, but if it scares off others from scamming then prison could end up net beneficial.

I will add that I'm not at all against programs trying to rehabilitate criminals, especially as those programs can both help the prisoner and society (by reducing repeat crimes); but I do believe that there is value in making the punishment for crime unpleasant for the criminal, which I don't think house arrest accomplishes.

[-] Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I believe all the data we have shows that harsher punishments don't effectively deter crimes, unfortunately. I'm just finding it hard to justify spending 116k/yr on someone who stole 70k when we can stop her from committing more crimes for far less

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/crime-and-punishment/201804/why-punishment-doesnt-reduce-crime

Sorry for not linking studies directly but the article has a better overview than any individual narrow study.

[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 0 points 1 day ago

I hate scammers, and I'm not arguing she's innocent. However, I wouldn't lose sleep over her serving her sentence from home. She is non violent, as far as I can tell, and she was not the mastermind.