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Comment by whateveracct | Hacker News Reader

Nobody said that. They said incarceration for petty theft is unreasonable.

Refusing to put thieves in jail leads to thieves not caring if they get caught. Which leads us back to modern day SF.

There is a big difference between petty theft as you'd think petty would mean (<$30 of small stuff) and what the law defines it as (<$950 of stuff).

You're also making the implicit assumption here that people who commit petty theft would actually care about the marginally higher chance of suffering consequences from it in a context where there isn't anything to mitigate the reasons they're committing petty theft in the first place.

And I think you're making the implicit assumption here that people who are the victims of petty theft just had their stuff stolen, and weren't assaulted, brutalized, terrified, or otherwise demeaned in a way that will change how they function or view their lives in society. There's a larger "cost" to petty theft than just the stuff that gets stolen.

The reason we have laws, and punishment associated with breaking those laws, around petty theft isn't just about incentivizing would-be thieves to not do it.

> isn't just about incentivizing would-be thieves to not do it

If the law around petty theft doesn't actually reduce the number of petty thefts that happen, then all it's doing on a societal level is wasting money.

Would love to have your privilege of considering petty theft to be harmless. For the majority of vulnerable people, it causes extreme emotional and financial distress. Try talking to actual people who are not privileged and see what they think about being victims of petty theft.

I never said it was harmless

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