Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions
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On other hand whole being marked felon thing is what really destroys the future. If you can't get a decent job, what options do you have left?
It'd appear though that given probability, an American is more likely to be in jail than the citizen of any other country, but even with this high threat of jail, these crimes seem to be on the rise.
It can be true that we over jail and impose longer sentences in some places, in some past eras, and/or for some crimes, to no good effect, while also in other places, other times, or for certain crimes, under punish such that there is zero deterrent effect when there needs to be at least some.
If so, then yes, let's lock them up. "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing.
I'm not defending stealing, I'm saying for all crime in America, the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. That button has already been pressed, hard.
Deterrent ? It does work, the people in jail are not stealing
Because that's the whole point, isn't it? Prevent economic loss. So that means the solution needs to cost LESS then the problem. Jails cost more. This is exactly the opposite of working, even on purely economic terms.
It would literally be cheaper (and obviously far more efficient for the economy) to offer anyone who steals $50 000 per year as long as they don't steal again. I mean you'd be paying criminals more than police officers, so I get that there would be revolution, but perhaps there are a LOT of cheap possibilities. If you offer someone $10k and what you ask in return keeps them out of prison for 3 months, that's a LARGE profit for the economy ...
The "prevent economic loss, by preventing stealing" argument is pretty strongly against prisons, doubly so in California.
We might also look at things like how you can come back from jail and get a normal life, and looking into how we house people who are not suitable to get out again.
In the meantime, imprison the people who do commit crimes, and if they do so again after they're out, imprison them again.
There's a reason prisons are called "schools for crime", and it's because of silly lines like "if they do so again [...], imprison them again". Please actually think, and eventually realize that reducing recidivism rates is how you get your "people who come out don't commit more crimes".
> Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world; in 2016, only 20% of inmates re-offended within 5 years. [...] Norway's prisons are renowned for being some of the best and most humane in the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway
Treat people like people, it's that simple. Attitudes like ahh's arise from not expanding past using their lizard brain. They create more of the problem they purport to complain about. Straight contradiction.
In either case: send people who commit crime to those prisons. If they do it again, send them back.
The proof is in the pudding, and your pudding is rotten. Give it some actual thought.
Treat addiction like an illness, not a crime, and your numbers will fall in line with the rest of the countries, quickly. Moreso if you get rid of those for-profit prison system while you are at it.
If the two are unrelated, then it may be that people want harsher punishments anyway just as you don't want harsher punishments anyway.
What? No.
1. Americans are just more likely to be criminals.
2. Other nations may be equally or even more ineffective at tackling crime.
The assumption that jail doesn't work rests on the assumption that other nations track crime as effectively and that their people are equally criminal.
There just isn’t the capacity of the system to deal with how terrible so many people are and the end result of that is cops not bothering to even record instances as they don’t think it will matter.
This is Canada.
3. The American system is putting a lot of innocent people behind bars.
What demographics in the US do you think are least likely to be secure in food, housing, and healthcare?
For example, men dominate the prison and violent crime demographics compared to women.
The real solutions will be technical. More precise delivery tracking (so you know when your package will arrive, so it doesn't get stolen off your porch an hour later). Drone delivery. Package lockers. Man traps at the supermarket exits.
I think corporal punishment should be considered as an alternative. Hard to be a cool gangster when you have a sore ass.
Is that true?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop...
I disagree, I do think people are going to jail for this.
There is evidence to support this thesis. First, we do know that a small group of people commit most of the crimes. Second, we see that in the U.S. when we let people out of institutions the crime rate went up until mass incarceration removed a roughly equivalent amount of people from society.
So there are about 2 million people who commit a huge number of crimes, and we need to decide, as a society, whether to lock these people up or live with the higher crime rates. I don't think there is much evidence that criminals can actually be treated somehow to be reformed, they are either tolerated* or warehoused until they age out.
(*) One middle ground of toleration you see in developing countries is creating zones where crimes can be committed more freely and rich people can buy their own security or live in zones where crimes are punished. Then criminals learn to avoid those zones. That's what a lot of nations (such as Argentina) do which have a large criminal class (like the U.S.) but that can't afford the costs of mass incarceration. They create geographic bubbles in which crime is low.
This is already happening in the USA. Bellevue WA has a much lower crime rate than Seattle WA. It isn't the rich people "buying" their own security, however, rather than them demanding their police are more numerous and tougher on crime than the city across the lake (pushing the problem over there). Even if King County (where Seattle and Bellevue are) doesn't prosecute, the people doing these things get annoyed with constant police interaction and harassment and so find Seattle much more appealing.
The top five cities for organized retail crime, in order, were Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco.
By “the DA” you are probably referring to the DA of the #5 city?
I feel like no one advocates for a middle ground. I usually don’t believe in locking people up excessively. I also don’t believe in effectively legalizing crime by never persecuting petty theft.
If it’s your second or third time shoplifting in bulk, I think a 6 month prison sentence is appropriate. There needs to be some penalty to disincentivize such behavior.
So, they make it more likely that you will become/remain a criminal once you come out, even after a short time. So, the middle ground doesn't really work well; we either have to try hard to not put someone in prison, or we basically commit to putting them in prison forever. Because we cannot really say the latter part out loud we release them occasionally and then put them back. The argument currently appears to be between these two extremes in isolation, and the real middle ground IMHO would be to do both things, to different people. But moderate punishment might be the worst of both worlds.
Getting arrested permanently changed my view on our justice system. It was a nonviolent offense, related to a paperwork issue, but it resulted in a bench warrant being issued for me.
If I hadn’t just received several thousand dollars in my account from an unexpected windfall, I would not have been able to pay the jail fees. Not fines for the ticket - which was completely dropped - the jail fees for simply being arrested.
The total out the door cost to get arrested was north of $2100 for me. You can beat the case, but you can’t beat the ride.
Full stop there. No other explanation really needed.
The argument is that they are in law (so not illegal) and compensatory rather than punitive (so not punishment.)
This is contentious, though, and jails have sometimes lost legal cases around them, e.g.:
https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2021/11/03/ruli...
The main reason for them, of course, is that while mass incarceration policies are popular with those bit subjected to them, paying for mass incarceration is not.
Harsher than “no punishment” might
I agree that harsher punishments would not work, but compassion that simply enables this behavior isn’t the way either.
Honestly, the way the suburbs (like Bellevue WA) handle the problem via simple police intimidation (every incident is met with overwhelming police presence) to push the problems on more open nearby cities (Seattle in this case) seems to be the only that works (locally at least, it doesn’t solve the problem at all regionally or nationally).
Ok, so maybe addressing that will be more fruitful than baying for more punishment!
> Yes, but: An analysis of crime statistics and other reporting by The Atlantic [1] cast doubt on what it called the "great shoplifting freak-out," citing "fuzzy data" and asserting that what's being lumped together as shoplifting is actually a variety of violent crimes.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifti...
The LEGO shelf in that store was cleared out long ago, much to my son's sadness.
But I wouldn't really call this "shoplifting" like I knew it as a kid (when my friends would do it on a stupid dare, trying not to get caught). These people...they aren't worried about getting caught, they aren't subtle about it, they just know the system isn't going to punish them so why not? Like who the heck would try to shoplift a 70 inch TV and think they could do that without anyone noticing? And the judge let him go even though he had like 5 bench warrants:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10447987/Prolific-s...
For example, Walgreens announced in 2019 that it would shutter 200 stores. Blaming shoplifting sounds like some serious Chamber of Commerce spin to direct attention away from them abandoning locations and the jobs that go with them, and to give ammunition to pro-corporate pro-policing factions.
Anyway, TFA links to more reading in its final paragraph. Look for the link in the following text:
but: An analysis of crime statistics and other reporting by The Atlantic cast doubt on what it called the "great shoplifting freak-out," citing "fuzzy data" and asserting that what's being lumped together as shoplifting is actually a variety of violent crimes.
This is certainly the case on HackerNews if it's a censoring tech company or a BigPharma Corp like Pfizer
Do you have any evidence for this?
Its not that hard.
Hire a couple of pharmacists. Check their licenses.
Hire a dozen regular employees.
Assign a few managers.
Buy drugs. Buy soft drinks and milk. Buy personal care goods.
Open between hours of 9 to 10 pm 24-7
There’s no long term strategic plan needed (should we switch to Pepsi? Why not stock both?). Except, maybe, the prescience to only hire ex-marines.
a. They can't hire enough people.
b. Shoplifting spikes later at night, so why bother being open then, especially when (a) is a problem.
It isn't just one thing, but given two problems put together, it leads to stones (cut hours, close stores) that kill multiple birds.
Also note that shoplifting is all over the news, but wage theft is still rampant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/want-t...
There was a wonderful and detailed article a while back about a baby formula shoplifting ring in the south that shows how this works. The people who are doing the shoplifting are often drug addicts who are promised cash payments or more drugs if they will go and shoplift by a middle man who then stockpiles the good and resales them on line. This isn't Jean Valjean stealing bread this is organized crime seeking to illicitly source goods.
No idea if it's really true, but it is suspicious how there's always a good explanation that something that looks like terrible injustice actually isn't.
This is a well documented phenomena and js evidenced by what people are stealing. You don't show up to Nordstrom with a garbage bag if you are starving and hungry you do it if you are looking to score.
Perhaps they drop off the ill fitting clothes the next day with a note.
Note: I personally think masks are a necessary and good thing right now. I just see it as something relevant to why we might see changes in certain statistics.
Prison in America is unjustly violent. The only thing I agree with progressives is that, if there’s no room to jail someone humanely, they shouldn't be in jail.
This to say, the homeless doesn’t want to go to jail for a warm meal. He knows his local DA isnt punishing crime.
They may let us eat cake, but we may opt to eat the rich instead.
Maybe you don't trust the stories over on /r/antiwork or /r/workreform but I think if even 1% is true, America is rapidly spiralling into a direction where a society can't be sustained.
For a large part of the USA population, young people have no hope of a beter future. They may even only have hope not to die and just to exist.
A home, decent wages, maybe a family one day, are probably for ever out of reach. Unbelievable for the IT tech bro for sure, with 6-figure salaries abound.
Maybe it will not be so bad after all, but I'm not so sure, to be frank.
To condone theft because you feel like it is the best option for you is the epitome of that mindset. It will destroy society because we destroy the incentive for anyone to create to produce and then we see real poverty. Everyone bitching on antiwork about their hopeless future are doing so from a place where they have regular stable electricity, running clean water, an internet connection, and I am going to guess ate sometime in the last 12 or at least 24 hours.
Contrast that with my brother in law from Africa when we was growing up the government was subject to constant rebellions, and anything you had could be taken at any time, it made it hard to build and secure goods and services because much of your time was trying to survive, and any appearance of success brought those that would take it from you.
That's where we are headed if we continue to ignore the fact that justice and laws are the price of civilized society regardless of how inhumane it feels.
I think people don't understand how fragile societies are, in general. Because we in the west had it good for the last 75 years is almost an anomaly if you look at history. And how things can turn if a large majority of the populace has no future to look forward to (like their parents had).
> To condone theft because you feel like it is the best option for you is the epitome of that mindset.
I absolutely condone theft if you need money to survive, not as a means to get the latest iPhone.
> It will destroy society because we destroy the incentive for anyone to create to produce and then we see real poverty. Everyone bitching on antiwork about their hopeless future are doing so from a place where they have regular stable electricity, running clean water, an internet connection, and I am going to guess ate sometime in the last 12 or at least 24 hours.
That reeks so much like victim blaming to me.
Exactly the skewed tech-bro view that is really beyond wrong. You don't undestand that mere existing with some running water and electricity isn't good enough. People need to live. Not dread existence - with just one health scare away from financial ruin - in a terrible soul eating job that doesn't pay anywhere decent.
If you don't want the lower class to start eating the rich / or just fucking up society for that matter, maybe the rich should pay their due, and share their wealth so others don't have to work 3 jobs to survive.
Don't blame the young people, with worthless college debt, with no hope of ever buying a house. Let's see what this will do to fertility rates and how that in turn will affect businesses.
Oh and regarding all those businesses that can't pay a liveable wage: then you have no viable business.
How do you design a law enforcement system that (1) doesn't grind down poor and minorities the way the current system does, yet (2) still makes punishment for minor crimes like shoplifting sufficiently swift, sure, and severe to be an effective deterrent?
Liberals tend to say "Let's focus on (1) and ignore (2)," while conservatives say "Let's focus on (2) and ignore (1)."
Is it possible to create a system satisfies both concerns? Or is there some fundamental reason that we can never have both? Do we need to pick exactly one of {(1), (2)} and just accept that we'll be stuck with whatever we decide is the lesser of two evils?
I bet people with steady jobs and with secure housing commit crimes at a rate of 0.1x (or less) of those who don't.
We can throw all the money we want at this problem, but at the end of the day, the person has to be somewhat willing to get their life back together, or we are just waiting it.
It is not like most of them didn't have housing/work before their addiction started. The "I got addicted to drugs because I lost my housing and job" isn't as common as the other way around. The reason the problem is so bad now is that really bad drugs that mess people up a lot are much easier to get these days. Many of those people are never coming back, even if you gave them food and shelter for life.
And you cannot force people to stop drugs, but most of them really don't want to be doing what they're doing, but they need a way out to be there when they try to find it. Tossing them in jail doesn't work and we can't lock them away for life or execute them.
And they need housing (even while they're on drugs) and they need a job when they start getting clean, or they'll relapse.
You can't force anything, which is kind of the point about why treating it with the criminal justice system is stupid.
If I ever start stealing from people to get drugs, please do throw me in prison too with the rest of them all, even if the root cause was legitimately prescribed painkillers.
And now you know the secret of all those European countries that have less crime and drug problems than we do.
Moreover, Walmart would throw the food away anyway, if nobody bought it.
>They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just load up on stuff,” the Post quoted a store employee saying
We've all seen the videos. When egregious behavior like this goes unpunished and is publicized, there's no shortage of unscrupulous thieves who will line up for an easy score. There is always a subset of the population which only follows laws out of fear of punishment.
> The vast majority of these people are not stealing out of desperation
Is that “you have seen some videos”.
From where I stand, that doesn’t look like a very strong base on which to build upon.
It's clear that Prop 47 and the general mentality that property crimes don't matter and prosecuting them is racist has failed.
Price of rent is a function of housing supply and demand. Rent control just pushes the costs to less visible things like security deposit, maintenance, etc.
I don't think "reselling rings" are that easy to crack down on, they probably are not rings at all rely on apps and services and operate on a more individual basis. The very framing of such is just used to justify greater police budgets, but this is something far harder than even the drug war to win. The only way to win it is to make sure entrepreneurial sorts find it more profitable to do things legitimately than it is to plunder goods, and ensure jobs and job training are more accessible than a life of crime.
I don't ever remember thinking of drug dealers at any school I went to as "ambitious". Some drug _users_, yes, but they never stole stuff to fund their drug habit. It was more like recreational, responsible alcohol for them. And now that we all have careers it's pretty clear who was actually ambitious and who wasted their parents' money.
Pharmacies and grocery stores being forced to close due to unchecked theft inflict pain and major lowering of quality of life to people around the neighborhood, and especially to people that can't just drive to the next store.
Also "just use online", may not be a solution. Medicine (especially pain pills), are continuous target of thefts.
Once the stores are closed, then the organized criminals move into homes. Next you will have to start installing heavy iron bars in your home. If you walk in parts of brooklyn, you'd see older homes that had massive bars even in 2nd floor windows, just to keep the people safe.
The market just doesn't solve the collapse of society. Unchecked theft costs to all society.
The elderly people with this wealth don't care - they can afford to live in places where this isn't a problem. Everyone else (young and old alike) can take a hike as far as these rich old folks are concerned.
That's...so reductive as to be actively misleading. "Have", "most", and "wealth" all deserve several asterisks.
Are we all supposed to own farms? How does that work with 330 million Americans? Who is going to have time to do things like design the hardware and software that power the devices you use to post on the internet--they don't have time to do that and work their personal farm for food...
Or: farms task themselves with producing food in the same way programmers task themselves with producing software.
The answer is, I don’t know why people do everything they do, but the labor market sorts itself out according to incentives, ability, compensation, laws, education, the dispersal of information and any number of factors.
We have farms and they are really good at what they do because we have food that is readily and cheaply accessible in abundance.
However, let's put this in context - when was the last time you did something, purely altruisticly, without any expectation of recompense? I think the people who do that kind of work are exceptional and exceptionally rare (assuming you are such a person). Even in those cases, those exceptional people choose problems where they can do the most good - and even if it can be argued that a community grocery store is such a place, it "competes" with various other local and global issues.
I imagine you need to get paid yourself in order to support your lifestyle.
Imagine someone were to approach you and ask the fruits of your labor for free - "qbasic_forever's software is a community good, why won't he simply do it for free?" I'm sure you have a variety of reasons, but most people's answers would be: life requires resources, so I must acquire those resources so that I and my family can live.
The grocery store owner and employees are in a similar circumstance. Or perhaps, a worse circumstance: "why should we continue to provide for a community which constantly steals from us and makes it harder for us to live?"
I have a very hard time answering this question - so I sympathize dearly with the grocery store owner.
Why should the owners of that supermarket go into ruin just to give you another shopping option? Why is it their responsibility to keep you fed at all?
Also, shoplifting is like calling firefighters to water your lawn, because, see, it's free!
Finally, they do have charitable "food delivery" places - they are called soup kitchens, but they are intended for people who can't afford food at all, not necessarily for people who have the money to buy what they need.
https://thegrocerystoreguy.com/what-is-the-profit-margin-for...
Really many factors bring even some losses to be unacceptable.
Not sure I want that. When the state refuses to protect private property, the market solution tends to look more like Vito Corleone. That's especially true when it appears certain organized crime groups are perpetrating coordinated thefts like the one at Nordstrom. The big corporations can't afford to to have mafia payments on the books, but they can afford to pack up and leave or encase everything in cages. The local mom 'n' pop store will be willing to pay a bit for protection.
In the past stores had Loss Prevention departments which were tasked with this stuff. It's never been the case that nobody shop lifted, its just now that the economic race has led retailers to externalize and cut costs.
It's very, very annoying to have some mall cop following you around, so now its a camera, later it will be many more and much better cameras with a lower paid employee with much less engagement with their occupation. I reject that it is an impossible task for national retailers.
I suspect walmart has a workable model: They move stocking into the shopping hours and use all of their employees as a micro-scale surveillance network.
Why should society foot the bill for for police and such to watch private property like this and essentialy persecute the population because the national retailers don't want to invest in the cost of doing business?
Inside of a store, it's completely reasonable and totally possible to just have an employee around.
Policing organized crime is the job of the FBI, if my knowledge of this stuff is a little bit correct. All of this surveillance garbage we've been ignoring for decades was supposed to solve these problems, but it is clearly not capable of doing so.
While that would indeed he instructive, it also would be quite destructive. I hope California can return to protecting the liberties that were already well-understood 200 years ago without going to such extremes.