Is insurance fraud OK?

Why is insurance fraud not seen as a proper crime deserving a fitting punishment?

Two pretty, young, British, women graduates in Brazil make a robbery claim to the police several days after the offence allegedly took place. The police get suspicious and when they check in the women’s hostel, they find some of the items the women claim were stolen.

Nobody denies that the women – law graduates at that – claimed for about £1,000 of items that were not stolen. It was, according to the mother of one, a “mistake”.

British papers are outraged that these pretty young things – English ladies whose careers in law could be jeopardised by a conviction – should be sent to prison. And prison becomes a “rat-infested hell-hole” and so overcrowded with murderers and drug dealers that our fair maidens have to sleep in the corridor.

Had they stolen £1,000 from a silver-haired granny, you can be pretty sure that a rat-infested hell-hole would be too good for them. So why is robbing an insurer the sort of “mistake” that should go unpunished?