I ask because we had a situation in Ireland just like this many years ago. It was for welfare fraud specifically and faced criticism for a few reasons. One was that the suspected levels of fraud may have been much lower than the politician was claiming. The other reason was that the cost of tackling it could likely outweigh any savings.
Depends. You could argue that economically speaking it’s not worthwhile to stop and cite people for speeding. Police do have discretion on that kind of thing so not the best example, but still, there’s probably stuff that isn’t good for the bottom line that just needs to happen. The government is not a business.
Now when I say “depends”, I would be more inclined to go after a small number of people committing massive fraud than a large number committing minor acts of fraud. In the first case I think charges would discourage future abuse but in the second probably not. It wouldn’t be a vast, organized network of people doing the same thing, but a bunch of people that happened to notice the same opportunity. I think you’d do just as well having applicants read and sign a paper that goes over the penalties of abuse (while spending very little resources on enforcement).