wellspring/15-torts-and-coordination/21-commandeered-crime.md

# Commandeered crimes:

We need a solid framework for dealing with crime bosses who act through agents and attempt to hide their involvement.

Ultimately we may not be able to do anything about it other than create some special reasoning around undisclosed principals, agency and incitement.

There's some overlap with the  blackmail framework as well. Consider the following:

Crime boss commandeers crimes from agent. Agent commits crime and collects evidence that boss commandeered the crime. Agent then flips the tables on boss and blackmails him, threatening to turn him in. Should the agent-turned-blackmailer now be chargeable with blackmail? Yes. The incentives are correct: it is correct that the blackmailing agent receives a higher penalty than the boss because blackmail exacerbates the situation. Basically we are saying: whatever your situation is, do not attempt to resolve it by becoming the new crime-commander via blackmail. Instead, either turn yourself and your commandeerer in, or else bear it silently.

It turns out that what we want is a way to incentivize agents of commandeerers to betray their commandeerer.