Post-Match Commentary by the Affirmative Side | In Fraud Prevention Policies, Adding Criminal Penalties is More Important Than Strengthening Financial Supervisory Measures | 2023 Judicial Reform Cup National High School and Vocational High School Debate Competition

Co-organized by the Judicial Reform Foundation and the Chinese Debate Promotion Association (CDPA), and co-hosted by Wun-Hua Senior High School, the "2023 Judicial Reform Cup High School Debate Competition" drew to a close in early June.

During the first day of the preliminary rounds, I served as a judge for three matches: Fengyuan Senior High School vs. Wun-Hua Senior High School, Affiliated Senior High School of National Chung Hsing University vs. Taichung Municipal Taichung Second Senior High School, and Taichung Municipal Taichung Second Senior High School vs. Huwei Senior High School. Based on these three matches and five teams, this article highlights common argumentative patterns used by the affirmative side and various attack-and-defense strategies employed by the negative side, illustrating high school debaters' understanding and perspectives on fraud prevention policies.

This article also incorporates my personal reflections as a judge to serve as a reference for future debate competitions and the advocacy of fraud prevention policies.

1. High School Students' Understanding of "Fraud Cases"

Across these three matches, both affirmative and negative debaters devoted considerable attention during their first constructive speeches to the patterns and characteristics of fraudulent crimes.

Although the specific details and cited data varied somewhat, they generally attempted to demonstrate the following points:

(1) Statistical data shows that both the total number of fraud cases and the proportion of fraud cases among all criminal cases are on the rise.

(2) The use of financial flows, communications, and other methods to create evidentiary gaps is the main reason why current fraud cases are difficult to investigate.

(3) Fraud resembles a transnational industrial chain; common domestic "dummy accounts" and "cash couriers" belong to the downstream, while the true "masterminds" and "call centers" are not necessarily located in Taiwan, often resulting in catching the small fish while letting the big fish go.

(4) Those who hand over dummy accounts include college students lacking social experience, as well as victims of job-seeking scams.

In addition to the above commonalities, the Affiliated Senior High School of National Chung Hsing University additionally mentioned during the affirmative first constructive speech that an emerging trend of fraud crimes utilizing virtual currencies has recently surfaced. Furthermore, because virtual currencies are not legal tender in Taiwan and exchanges are often located abroad, it is even more difficult to address them through traditional financial regulatory measures. They attempted to use this to prove that criminal penalties are more likely to play a role in responding to changes in emerging criminal patterns.

If the affirmative side wishes to argue that adding criminal penalties has such benefits, it ought to bear the burden of proof to substantiate its proposition. However, the affirmative side only successfully and superficially explained why the "traditional financial system" struggles to play a role in virtual currency fraud cases, without further illustrating—through transnational experiences or examples—the reasons why establishing criminal penalties can effectively handle virtual currency fraud cases. This approach of merely attacking the negative side does not help substantiate the proposition. Therefore, although the affirmative claimed this advantage, I did not adopt this argument when scoring the final points.

2. Can Heavier Penalties Bring Deterrence?

Regarding the addition of criminal penalties, both Fengyuan Senior High School and Taichung Municipal Taichung Second Senior High School discussed the issue from the perspective of "increasing prison sentences." They used the trend of decreasing prosecution numbers and crime rates after the penalties for drunk driving were increased to argue that lengthening prison terms can effectively guide people's behavior and achieve a deterrent effect.

In this regard, using drunk driving solely as an analogical argument to discuss whether adding prison terms can effectively guide people's behavior is actually quite crude and incomplete. Unfortunately, the negative side did not prepare counter-examples such as "crime rates failing to decrease after prison terms were increased" or "crime rates failing to increase after prison terms were reduced," and launched very few challenges against the affirmative's arguments.

In the first match, the negative side, Wun-Hua Senior High School, launched its challenge solely from the length of the increased prison sentence. During that match, the affirmative pointed out in its first constructive speech that criminal penalties for fraud prevention should adopt a "cumulative penalty" model; for example: a fine of NT$100,000 for a first offense, and 2 years of imprisonment for a repeat offense.

The negative side asked the affirmative: "Drunk driving achieves such remarkable results because offenders can be heavily penalized with 10 years; might fraud prevention, which penalizes for only 2 years, fall short of expected deterrent effects?"
　
Interestingly, while the negative side's question seemingly aimed to conclude that "the affirmative's effect of adding criminal penalties will fall short of expectations," it actually conceded the affirmative's premise—namely, that "in the case of drunk driving, heavier penalties help reduce crime rates." The affirmative could easily build upon the negative side's question to further emphasize the benefits of adding criminal penalties, commenting that a penalty of 2 years might not be heavy enough and that further increases remain necessary.

Across these three matches, when discussing whether heavier penalties help reduce fraud cases, the negative side adopted two other modes of challenge.

The first was presented by Taichung Municipal Taichung Second Senior High School while playing the negative side. They put forward another argument stating that to reduce people's criminal motives, rather than merely increasing penalties, what is more important is how quickly criminals can be brought to justice and the conviction rate after arrest. By doing so, they argued that strengthening financial supervisory measures helps reduce evidentiary gaps and leaves traces, making it easier for prosecutorial and police authorities to detect and intercept criminal behavior in a timely manner. Therefore, financial supervision serves as the foundation upon which criminal penalties can exert their effects.

The second was presented by Douliu Senior High School while playing the negative side, which raised the additional harms of heavier penalties.

The affirmative in that match advocated applying administrative penalties for first-time dummy account offenders, and penalizing repeat offenders with criminal punishment along with heavier sentencing. The negative side questioned that if criminal penalties are excessively high or if the behavior is disproportionate to the penalty, it might also cause people who inadvertently violate the law—in order to avoid a criminal record and punishment—to have even less incentive to voluntarily report the crime or cooperate with investigations, thereby rendering fraud cases, which already feature numerous evidentiary gaps, even more devoid of evidence.

Unfortunately, Douliu Senior High School devoted little attention to this and failed to compel the affirmative to compare the benefits and harms of "reducing criminal incentives" versus "the public's unwillingness to cooperate with investigations." Consequently, although harms were raised, they ultimately could not influence the outcome of the match.

3. The Myth That "More Effective = More Important"

The motion of this competition is typically classified in competitive debate as a "value proposition" or "factual proposition." This means that neither the affirmative nor the negative side needs to endorse specific policies and regulations. Under such motion design, whichever side advocates that "adding criminal penalties" or "strengthening financial supervisory measures" is more important can engage in diverse discussions based on different policy instruments and transnational experiences.

Regrettably, across these three matches, the affirmative side—acting as the advocates for "adding criminal penalties"—mostly interpreted the issue solely from the dimension of "increasing penalty severity." Both sides also frequently discussed only the category of handing over dummy accounts when examining the patterns of fraud cases, thereby making the discussion relatively fragmented and flat.

Furthermore, the affirmative's justifications for why adding criminal penalties is more important than strengthening financial supervision boiled down to no more than two arguments: "enhancing deterrence and lowering crime rates," and "solving the problem more fundamentally."

However, this inevitably gives rise to numerous doubts. Since both sides already mentioned at the very beginning of the matches that many people embark on the wrong path precisely because they "do not know the consequences" or are "financially strapped and in economic distress," and may themselves be victims of job-seeking or investment scams, does the affirmative truly believe that after increasing criminal penalties, this group of people will no longer hand over accounts for the sake of immediate sustenance? And even if this measure prevents the parties involved from handing over accounts, under economic distress, might they make other more extreme choices? Are these choices beneficial or detrimental to society as a whole? I believe these are questions that the affirmative must further contemplate.

Secondly, as dummy accounts constitute the absolute downstream of the fraud crime industrial chain, coupled with the characteristic that fraud cases often cannot be traced upward due to evidentiary gaps, debaters mentioned more than once the dilemma in Taiwan where small-time offenders are caught while masterminds are let off. Under such practical circumstances, can placing fraud prevention resources and priorities on investigating dummy accounts truly be regarded as a "fundamental solution"? Or does it merely throw more socioeconomically disadvantaged crowds without criminal intent into the judicial system, and even make it harder for them to achieve upward mobility due to bearing criminal records and social stigmas?

When confronting fraud prevention policy measures, equating "importance" with "effectiveness" while failing to discuss the symbolic significance of penal, administrative, and financial supervisory measures, or their actual effectiveness in overall fraud crime prevention, is truly a regrettable oversight.

4. Regardless of Stance and Position, Both Benefits and Harms Should Be Considered Simultaneously

Finally, I would like to additionally remind that in these three matches, both the affirmative and negative sides seemed to spar across empty space on their respective stages, shouting to the judges "I am better!" and "I can reduce crime more effectively," while failing to actively elaborate on the negative effects of criminal penalties and financial supervision. This was a relatively regrettable aspect.

Although some negative sides consciously wanted to discuss extreme situations—such as asking the affirmative: "If stronger criminal penalties are more effective, should we impose the death penalty across the board?"—after the affirmative rebutted, the negative sides failed to actively press forward by asking what the affirmative's concerns were, nor did they proactively argue other possible negative effects, which was somewhat disappointing.

The affirmative sides also frequently found themselves at a loss as to how to tackle the negative sides' arguments. This included negative teams advocating for strengthened financial management, such as uniformly changing daily withdrawal limits to NT$50,000, or using fund-holding mechanisms to increase the difficulty for fraud syndicates to withdraw money. However, it is worth noting that while such measures can slow down capital flows and make it harder for fraud syndicates to misappropriate accounts and funds, their impact will inevitably extend beyond fraud syndicates, potentially spilling over into daily commercial and economic activities in society (right now, just applying for securities accounts requires background checks and being frequently asked to change passwords is already quite bothersome). The negative effects behind these measures likewise lacked further discussion.

5. Conclusion

Targeting fraud prevention policies, this competition discussed the differences between criminal and financial supervisory measures. It certainly felt like a motion requiring high school debaters to invest thought to understand deeply. In particular, since most high school students rarely deal with financial institutions, imagining the operations of financial supervisory mechanisms may have become a threshold during pre-match preparation.

However, according to statistical data from the Ministry of Education and the National Police Agency, fraud cases involving students account for roughly 10% of overall fraud cases in recent years. There are also cases where fraud syndicates exploit students' psychological states of not daring to seek help, fearing punishment, and fearing loss of face to swindle the same individual repeatedly, even driving them to desperation before luring them into joining fraud syndicates as cash couriers. Viewed from these perspectives, alerting high school students to fraud cases early on and deepening students' understanding of fraud prevention policies indeed possess significant importance.

It is also my deep hope that synthesizing these three matches will enable all sectors of society to better understand students' imaginations and thoughts regarding "criminal policy," thereby fostering deeper interactions and dialogues in the future.