Jail time is expensive so is detective work, prosecution, and courts. Law abiding citizens end up paying for much of this. It would be nice to shift more of the burden back on the criminals themselves. If they have any assets they can be confiscated and sold after they are convicted in order to pay for their time in jail…However this post is about taxing them before they are caught, before we even know who they are, and perhaps even before they even commit the crime.

In I Thessalonians 5:22 the Bible states (depending on translation) “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” or just “abstain from every form of evil”. It is the “appearance of evil” translation that is useful to us when trying to determine how to tax serial killers and criminals before they get caught. If serial killers are statistically known to wear red vests in a higher percentage that the rest of the general population we can tax red vests at a higher percent than other goods in order to pay for investigations into serial killers, jail time, etc. Taxing this item a little bit higher will unlikely changed the serial killers behavior and he will keep buying red vests. Taxing red vests a lot may cause him to start seeing blue vests in a new light and his behavior may change. By layering on many small taxes on the variant behavior of criminals we can cause them to end up paying more in taxes (statistically) than the general public which will in turn help pay for all the costs they bear upon society. The lower taxes paid by the general public can either be refunded thus making a subtraction leaving only those likely to be criminals paying taxes or the money can be earmarked for other things like roads and bridges.

Now obviously this type of taxation can be abused and it isn’t perfect to begin with. Some innocent people will fall though the cracks and pay more in taxes because they share similar characteristics to criminals and some criminals will only pay the minimum amount because they don’t. Some bad actors may tax non-behavior characteristics like race, gender, or the physical state a person is born with and unlikely to be able to change. Other bad actors may use this tool to tax their political opponents or religious groups they don’t like. There is also transactions costs to consider as having a complicated tax system has a cost in an of itself. While this form of taxation is not perfect it is better generally for members of society as those who are good pay less and those who are evil pay more…statistically.