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Comment by buran77 | Hacker News Reader

When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything.

People take the easier option. You choose "lock your trains well" despite knowing the answer will be "crack those locks well" because it was the easy answer. The view is simple. Eventually the train will be a rolling mountain of steel protected by an army. Your fishing lure will cost an arm and a leg because protection costs are up. And the thieves will just be relegated to do slave work (the work that shouldn't exist in those conditions but society was too busy locking the train well to bother protecting its most vulnerable members) or starve because those are the only options on the table.

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These types of crimes are generally opportunistic. Opportunistic crimes are committed by people who literally don't think of any future, they don't see any risk, only the chance of a reward. Prison is not on their mind. Similar types of crime would be most house burglaries where entrance is easy, pick pocketing and street mugging.

For house burglary the way to deter opportunistic criminals is to harden down the house just a little bit. Lock doors, close windows.

Often drugs is the driving factor. I notice that out of 207 comments in this thread, only 4 including this one mention drugs.

(I used to work in a criminology research office)

But think about that, in your average day, how many opportunities did you have to steal or otherwise break the law. I'm guessing, A LOT, and how many did you take advantage of? (I speculate, none, because your standard of living is such that it's not an attractive option to you).

> When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything.

That assumes thieves are rational actors capable of assessing risks at least somewhat accurately. Often times (the vast majority of times, even) they are not.

It's also worth bringing up that certain American subcultures glorify criminals. The criminal lifestyle is seen as glamorous by a large number of people, while honest labor is just dull, whether it pays enough or not.

I think this is a fundamental attribution error... You're saying the person _is_ a thief, whereas I would say the person is _committing_ thievery. In the first case, it's the persons nature and no change in incentives would dissuade them. In the second, if you change the incentives so that thievery is less attractive (with its inherent risks) than just working for a good wage, the behavior would vanish.

_People committing thievery_ more often than not aren’t rational actors capable of assessing risks at least somewhat accurately. There, exact same argument with a term you prefer.

I am reminded of this from acoup.blog

"They are poor, not stupid"

He was commenting on the risk decisions of farmers throughout history. It would be sensible for people to put all their effort into growing surplus of one crop for sale, but then they would be at greater risk of starving under crop failure.

People's choices are affected by their (percevied) risk calculus.

https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

Hard disagree. The majority probably >95% of _People committing thievery_ will have assessed the risk to reward before doing it otherwise what would be the point? even if just for momentary excitement. They just have very little to lose if they get caught. The problem is so many people are being pushed out of decent society in terms of rewards for work and wealth increase. you even have people who expect to go to prison at some point in their life simply because of the circumstances for their birth.

Earning a criminal record has an extremely high cost even if you are poor. Actually, especially if you are poor.

<<It's also worth bringing up that certain American subcultures glorify criminals. The criminal lifestyle is seen as glamorous by a large number of people, while honest labor is just dull, whether it pays enough or not.

It probably is not the main driver, but it is hard to discount it as a factor. Another interesting archetype is one man going solo against a corrupt system ( usually guns are involved ). You could reasonably argue that US populace is conditioned for it and then people are all surprised when people actually act out on those early imprints.

> When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything.

Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero.

That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in local malls, the thefts will continue.

Let's stop pretending these thieves are "starving". Starving people don't pull up to a Gucci or Louis Vuitton in a Porsche and casually steal a luxury handbag for their girlfriend.

If all work is slavery to you, how about the people who produced all these iPhones and LV bags?

We're dealing here with people who are happy to steal the products of other people's work, instead of doing any work themselves.

there has been no meaningful defunding of police in any major metropolitan area in california and no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades. you are regurgitating authoritarian propaganda with no evidence.

> no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades

If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?

Because it’s work and the cops are lazy? No one’s on their ass to go after it either unless it happens to someone with money or connections.

California passed a a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law. Passing such Propositions then blaming cops for rising crime is sinister.

From this article

> It recategorized some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors, rather than felonies, as they had previously been categorized.

It’s still a crime. Police’s job is to respond to crime. Can you imagine if you were tasked with a job and then just stopped doing it because your thought your boss needed to take it more seriously? Any place I worked you’d get fired.

Especially if you started lying to everyone that your boss made it a rule that the problem can’t be dealt with when in reality you just think the consequences aren’t high enough

> No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law

They could patrol the streets and respond to the crime. The court system and prosecutors office decides if it needs to escalate from there. This is the LAPD however so they’re probably too busy forming gangs and engaging in crime themselves

a century of propaganda has led everyone to think that the police spend a lot of effort 'solving' crimes, but a cursory look at clearance statistics will reveal otherwise.

to the extent that police are an effective anti-crime tool, it primarily stems from their physical presence (racially profiled harassment) as a deterrent. outside of homicides & some PR-useful drug enforcement, police departments spend most of their time discouraging people from filing police reports after actual crimes, harassing poor people, and meeting traffic citation quotas

California passed a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

That means criminals engaging in such thefts cannot be legally arrested or prosecuted.

And we haven't even started discussing LA's new DA Gascon's aggressive move to decriminalize a very large set of offenses:

https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...

did you see the amount of packages that had been opened and littered all over?? I'd say that the risk of getting caught there was extremely low and that desperation had little to do with it and it was more opportunistic.

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