Are you against jail-time for all non-violent white collar crimes or just negligence in the realm of technology companies?

Please don't assume that anyone with a different view hasn't considered the significance of their position.

Yes, I am against jail for non-violent crimes. I'm open to modern non-medieval ideas even for violent crimes. I don't have the answers there, but I wish there were more people caring about this. So far it seems to be only the far left (I don't consider that an insult) and anarcho-capitalists, but I wish more people that fall into the middle somewhere (like myself) would think about this. Usually people don't think about stuff that affects strangers all that much until it affects them or a loved one. That's a people problem in general and I don't know how to solve it either.

Let's say someone steal a billion dollars through fraud and hide it. What should be done? Should they just walk free?

There's a difference between non-violent crimes (white collar crimes usually) and victimless crimes (possessing a small amount of controlled substances).

First things first, they could pay back the $1 billion?

First of all, that's not a deterrent, though. If I can steal your money and all I have to do is return it if you catch me, I'll keep doing it. So you need some sort of punishment on top.

Which brings us to the second point... At minimum you should be fined, at least to cover interest gained while you held the money, probably more to cover emotional distress and otherwise.

Plus, at those kinds of sums, we're somewhere into "stole pension money territory" where we're only a few minutes away from "old lady took her own life after losing life savings".

So things are a lot murkier than they might seem.

I also expected the money is hidden away, such that the the legal system cannot get it back. Money can be laundered away. These are smarter criminals, not ones that just robbed a bank for cash and have it under their beds.

I'm generally supportive of more understanding sentencing, but I do think you're failing to consider how theft can be as damaging as violence (sometimes worse).

If someone breaks their spouse's ribs through domestic abuse, you'd apparently agree they need to be imprisoned.

But if someone steals someone else's identity and entire savings, ruins their identity, robs them of the ability to get another job or take out loans, which then results in them being unable to pay for medical treatment for their child, who dies, followed by their own suicide, I'd argue that's a far more tragic outcome, resulting from what you're categorizing as a "nonviolent crime". I'd argue that the latter crime is much more damaging, and should perhaps be treated as such in the justice system.

Not even the most liberal societies on Earth, usually the Scandinavian ones, go as far as you describe. And they do have a prison system meant for prevention of recidivism and reintegration into society.

What you're saying is closer to an utopian ideal or who knows, something at least 50 years from now, in the future? :-)

Less utopian than people who cannot imagine themselves committing a violent crime (either because they are not physically imposing, or because the tiny gains of violent crime wouldn't make a dent in their monthly nut) thinking that the people who actually commit the crimes that they themselves consider committing might not be all bad.

White collar crime kills more people than violent crime by multiple orders of magnitude.

Jail is used for a lot of "non-violent" crime, such as fraud if the judge/court thinks it's warranted. Jun Ying, Equifax's previous CIO did 4 months in jail and another did 8 months of home confinement.

Handling data is a privilege, not a right, and can come at a huge cost. Just look at Parler for example, they weren't even stripping EXIF data which depending on how you look at is is either great for those involved to be tracked and arrested or a terrifying oversight that will lead to huge repercussions...

Data can end lives, this has been proven time and again, it's just as dangerous as a knife or gun in certain circumstances and the crime of having it leaked must have an appropriate punishment

Is there any deterrent benefit from potential jail time?

Companies with armies of lawyers are pretty good at establishing plausible deniability, so the "because your employees made a mistake" argument, while you advanced it in good faith, is constantly exploited as an excuse.

I honestly don't know. I worked with a company once that had regulatory burdens. They were young enough that they hadn't yet hired the first IT person, let alone a security team, so it was just regular devs trying to comply. Needless to say when I came in (as a regular dev that happens to specialize in security) I waved the red flag and pointed out the possible jail time to the executives, and they were not concerned, even though the laws explicitly lay out that "because your employees made a mistake" was unequivocally not an excuse (and this has held up in court by the way). I'm being ambiguous intentionally here so I can't give details.

But regardless whether there is a deterrent benefit, I think the reality is that jails effect non-executives and normal people (especially the closer to poverty you get) far more than they ever would executives. A much better approach IMHO would be to develop alternatives and phase out incarceration altogether (or at least as much as possible) by rolling them out broadly, would be a better, more humane solution.

Well in that case the person would be going to jail because he can't be trusted with not exposing private information, so another form of protection