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Comment by for_the_many | Hacker News Reader

You got it backwards.

Madness is what happens outside of SF, where homelessness, poverty, drug usage, petty theft is criminalized.

SF is a beacon of hope. We don't throw poor people in prison just because they had to break into a car to get money for their daily dose of crack. Hopefully drug usage will be completely legalized soon, and you'll be able to get your drugs from the corner grocery store, and if you are too poor to pay for them you'll get them for free.

It's disgusting that in a city with so many billionaires people need to steal to make ends meet.

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petty theft, like all theft, is not merely criminal - it is an act of violence and should be treated as such.

Very much like children, people operating at this level of development (god help them) will expand their behaviors to fit into whatever vacuum is present. Your "petty theft" graduates to "petty theft inside a home" which graduates to "petty theft inside a home oops there's a guy here oops now somebody is dead".

"We don't throw poor people in prison just because they had to break into a car to get money for their daily dose of crack."

I am part of that "we" and I say shame. Shame on you for lacking even the basic fortitude to respond to violence. Shame on you for excusing that violence in a bartered exchange for whatever moral permissiveness you, yourself, desire.

> SF is a beacon of hope. We don't throw poor people in prison just because they had to break into a car to get money for their daily dose of crack.

You should be throwing them in jail for that. Otherwise you just perpetuate the problem and they do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day. At what point are they responsible for their own actions in your eyes?

> you'll be able to get your drugs from the corner grocery store, and if you are too poor to pay for them you'll get them for free.

What could go wrong!?!1

> It's disgusting that in a city with so many billionaires people need to steal to make ends meet.

They don't need to steal. You have tons of outreach programs and if those are not enough and the cost of living is too high then a perfectly reasonable response is to get out of SF if they can't afford it.

Save the sob story for another time. SFPD has said a number of times that most car thefts are due to criminal gangs.

I personally like petty theft being criminalized.

Agreed. Don't steal other people's stuff or you will go to jail seems like a pretty fair system to me.

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