The number of criminal prosecutions for tax evasion more than doubled in the UK during the last tax year, amid claims that the exchequer has increased its hit-rate by targeting "small time" offenders suspected of defrauding the taxpayer.
It started out as a stupid prank, but a small-time offender arrested by police later in connection with an unrelated incident sought a better deal for himself by identifying Martinez as a bicycle thief.
The cases the I.R.S. is pursuing, the Syracuse study found, are skewed to small-time offenders.
But it also leads to repeated encounters with small-time offenders that, residents said, can turn ugly.
Private-probation companies, too, have quietly taken off in recent years, often selling themselves as a cheap way to keep small-time offenders out of jail.
He had accused her of being soft on crime because she supported probation for nonviolent small-time offenders (to make room in prisons for violent felons).
He also brought in undercover units to crack down on small-time offenders such as fare-beaters and smokers in an attempt to highlight intolerance of even the slightest subway crime.
During labor shortages, inmates say Masanjia officials simply buy small-time offenders from other cities on a sliding scale that begins at 800 renminbi, or about $130, for six months of labor.
Birkhead links his views on immigration to a larger philosophy of encouraging "second chances" for small-time offenders and concentrating on serious threats to public safety rather than marijuana misdemeanors, for example.
It is a disparity that is particularly striking not for the most violent criminals, like rapists and murderers, but for small-time offenders who commit property crimes like stealing a television from a house or shoplifting from Duane Reade — precisely the people many states are now working to keep out of prison in the first place.
This means making sure that fewer people die from drug overdoses and that small-time offenders do not end up in jail where their drug problems get worse.
