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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why stings/bait-items aren't used more often, when an area is facing a rash of specific kinds of crime, like bike theft, parked-car smash-and-grabs, and package theft.

It's often a small number of violators – sometimes professional – who've been emboldened by early successes to scale up. So just a few stings, with adequate follow-through prosecution, could have a highly-leveraged effect on the overall rate.

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It's the adequate follow-through prosecution that's the problem.

Fines? Can't get blood from a stone. Jailtime? The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage.

I have no solution to offer here.

The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage.

That's the rationale that makes car theft such a huge problem around here in the Seattle area, or did until the laws were tightened up a bit. Prosecutors and judges either didn't consider it worthwhile to punish offenders heavily or didn't have the legal tools to to do, so we ended up with people who had literally dozens of prior arrests being set free to steal more cars.

Not everything is supposed to be a profit center, and that includes law enforcement. I pay taxes to keep criminals away from my home and out of my life, and I expect to get what I pay for. Whether it's inconvenient or unprofitable to do so is not my concern.

> Whether it's inconvenient or unprofitable to do so is not my concern.

It should be if you’re paying taxes. I personally don’t want my taxes to skyrocket to cover expanded law enforcement if it doesn’t provide a meaningful benefit.

For the record, (almost) no one thinks law enforcement should be profitable. That doesn’t mean that cost/benefit analysis shouldn’t factor in.

> Jailtime? The cost-benefit analysis doesn't support that, prison time is expensive and petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage.

You're not considering deterrence. Sure, the cost/benefit of an individual does not support jailing a small-time thief. However, other potential thiefs may be deterred from committing the crime in the first place. This aggregate level of crime reduction often does justify itself in a cost/benefit analysis.

Is deterrence really a thing? Multiple studies show that more severe punishments don't actually deter because the people committing the xrime almost never think of them.

See https://nij.gov/five-things/Pages/deterrence.aspx

Usually the major deterrent to crime is the likelihood of being caught. A lot of research has shown that longer sentences don't deter, however getting caught more often does.

https://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx

#3 on that list is all about deterrence. “Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.”

If criminals believe that the cost/benefit analysis will leave their crimes uninvestigated and unpunished, then yes, they are more likely to commit crimes.

#1 on the list you forwarded is: "The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment." #3 is "Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished."

Stings run by police, generating stories of caught-criminals, and making it so that repeat offenders face a rapidly-escalating likelihood of being caught, would seem to deter, by the evidence at your link.

Community service, pays back the community, hopefully break-even cost in terms of administration and enforcement to labor productivity gained, at least won't be as bad as a prison sentence. At best can be a form of rehabilitation.

And when you don't do your community service because there's no consequences (because jails are already full and because you can't squeeze water from a stone), what happens?

You also have to pay someone to constantly supervise them which is just as expensive as just paying someone to do the job.

Community service, pays back the community,

Probably just a gimmick. Court costs and overhead time checking the crooks doing mandatory good deeds might be more. But then we have to punish them somewhow

I'm not sure if this has been tried before, but how about a time consuming (multiple choice) test for deterring crimes where an offender, in order to cut prison time, has to study hard and be mentally in involved with like 1000 questions for a few hours. Fail the test? You're given a week to study and take the test again. The type of test that is so annoying that once you pass you don't want to take it again.

So, you're saying that to avoid jail, all the offender has to do is sit in a room for a few hours every week?

Could the police, after being baiting a thief have enough evidence to support an investigation into the individual, and get them for a felony?

Social credit score system in China takes this role I understand. People seem not to like that idea however.

Such systems have many problems, one of them being that they're fully automated, and mistakes WILL be made. One day you wake up with a ruined social score because someone who looked a bit like you was witnessed by a camera selling drugs or something. Have fun trying to correct that before someone decides to look up your score. Not to mention all the potential for abuse.

Public shaming.

It would work for some but a certain subset of people don't empathize and really don't care.

That stopped working when homeless people became invisible to us.

> petty theft doesn't really cause that much damage

Sure it does. Insurance rates. Compare rates for San Francisco vs. Houston for comprehensive coverage. Or San Francisco vs. Cupertino for that matter. Every smash and grab costs everyone more money.

Prop 47 is a big culprit. These thieves can cause $1000 in damage to a car, but their prosecution is pretty much pointless.

If we want to talk cost benefit analysis, prosecuting armed robbery with no injuries doesn’t make sense either: if the robber gets $100, and it costs $100,000 to imprison them, then that’s a bad cost benefit return right? If you want to operate under a cost benefit analysis, jail time should only be required if whatever damage is done exceeds the cost of incarceration. That’s absurd, but that’s what a cost benefit analysis would reveal, assuming costs are measured in dollars.

Broken windows policing works [1].

https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/the-matrix/micro-p...

  if the robber gets $100, and it costs $100,000 to
  imprison them, then that’s a bad cost benefit
  return right?

Depends if it deters him and 9 other robbers, who would otherwise have committed 100 such crimes each.

I mean, if a criminal is operating under rational choice theory [1] and they know their crime will go unpunished even if it is detected, why wouldn't they steal packages?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...

Why is this comment, which is sourced and well argued, greyed out without a single response?

Because many people wants no people in jails. Can't stop people from committing crime? Well, don't put them in a jail and bam, you have no people in jails!

Who cares about what someone feels after they get robbed. Public feeling safe does not register on RoI report.

I know a family friend who works in internal investigations at $PACKAGE_DELIVERY_CORP, and this kind of sting is nothing new. You just don’t hear about it.

Disclosure: I work at AWS but know nothing about Amazon delivery

Probably because it is work and the police don't care. In California with Prop 47, it might not even be a crime to steal packages.

  it might not even be a crime

The relevant question becomes, "is a crime that is not prosecuted materially different from a non-crime?"

Why is this comment being downvoted?

Perhaps a direct quote from prop 47 would clarify how it makes theft not a crime.

I was curious about that comment so I Googled it. Here is the top hit which has fairly good depth:

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...

The summary seems to be that Prop 47 treats shoplifting under $950 of value as a misdemeanor. As a result, law enforcement is unlikely to pursue and punish, so thieves get away scot-free.

Additionally, organized crime has exploited this and can easily recruit people for their shoplifting rings. The article reports that retailers have seen a rise in shoplifting since the law took effect.

So presumably, package theft of anything below the value of $950 from a door step (not a federal USPS mailbox) would only be a misdemeanor in California.

Theft of goods valued under $950 was reclassified from a felony to a misdemeanor, regardless of what the item in question is (a case in 2017 was a car!).

So, still a crime, on par with jaywalking and littering (which, in Cali, is a minimim $100 fine + 8 hours community service).

And yet, we're talking about things that could be Christmas gifts, baby food, medicine, people's means of transportation, you name it.

on par with jaywalking and littering

This is false. Jaywalking and littering (and most traffic offenses) are infractions, not misdemeanors. Misdemeanors are still serious crimes that can result in jailtime.

In California, sure. That is not true everywhere. There's occasional stories of arrests over jaywalking in Atlanta and Detroit, and Nevada does list it as a misdemeanor, on par with:

* solicitation of prostitution * DUI with no injuries * trespass * battery domestic violence (with no injuries)

https://www.shouselaw.com/nevada/misdemeanor-law.html

Same goes for littering in assorted jurisdictions. I'll concede that lumping those two as examples in a discussion involving Cali as context was misleading. The fine + 8 hours community service is for the infraction of littering in california. That is not to say that they are not misdemeanors elsewhere.

Is jaywalking really a misdemeanor? That would be incredibly harsh.

Not in California, same for littering (the reference to Cali was only for the fine + hours of community service). However, it is in Nevada:

https://www.shouselaw.com/nevada/misdemeanor-law.html

and various other jurisdictions.

Interesting, apparently because misdemeanor is the lowest possible category. Most places classify it as an “infraction” which is a step below a misdemeanor.

I bet that has caused some unfortunate fuss with people “convicted of a misdemeanor” for a simple speeding ticket trying to explain it in a state where a misdemeanor is something more serious.

" In California with Prop 47, it might not even be a crime to steal packages."

Good thing California doesn't make laws and regulations related to packages and mail, the USPS does, so it is still a federal crime to steal packages.

Genuine question, does that apply to packages delivered by ups or FedEx?

It does not.

Police departments have major limitations on manpower and budgets. Setting up sting operations with fake packages, surveillance, and all this stuff is going to be extremely expensive on both accounts. And the ultimate reward is that you just busted a guy who either committed a very minor felony which some states, such as California, are even moving to change to a misdemeanor. And I'd imagine a decent number of the offenders are not exactly financially well to do, meaning they may not even be able to pay the fines to recoup some of the costs involved in busting them.

Think about the sort of petty offenses that are more actively pursued. You'll almost always find they tend to be low execution cost with a high probability of receiving payment: traffic violations, prostitution stings, drug related stuff, etc.

It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed. Maybe it's a small number of violators (do you have a citaton?) or maybe it's just a few opportunistic kids. I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis (not just monetary but social too).

A sting which leaves typical, well-tracked target property in known problem locations isn't really manufacturing extra crime. (For example, it's not like the active entrapment of offering someone money, or verbal encouragement, to commit a criminal act they wouldn't have thought of themselves.)

It instead captures existing roving criminal intent – perhaps redirecting it from a less-ready victim. And when the bait is taken, an actual crime occurs – in destruction or taking of another's property.

And often, when a bust is made in relation to a single such crime – such as by tracking the stolen item back to the thief's staging areas or accomplices – evidence of other similar crimes is found as well.

> It is creating crime which otherwise may not have existed

There is nuance here. While I am traditionally against entrapment, I don't believe this crosses that line. If the police were surreptitiously encouraging the theft it might be different.

> I'd really need to see a cost/benefit analysis

It's a bit hard to quantify peace of mind or be able to correlate changes in theft counts due to sample size issues and the myriad of other reasons why theft counts may change.

I mean I'm for it if there's suspicion of a single offender. But in that case they could probably monitor the houses that they hit regularly and catch them in the act. This feels more like a broad net to attempt to bump some statistics.

They aren’t just stealing dummy packages though. If a worker would steal a dummy package, they would steal a “real” package. And those loses mean we all pay more for stuff. Theft, even petty stuff like shoplifting means everything costs more — and that’s regressive; poor people would be disproportionately affected by increased costs due to theft.

By that standard, when the homeowners leave packages outside after delivery they’re also “creating crime”.

It’s perfectly legal and ethical to leave a package outside. What’s not ethical or legal is stealing other people’s property. The criminals are the ones creating crime, not the people trying to catch the criminals.

So far as I know, my city uses bait bikes.

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