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Comment by creamynebula | Hacker News Reader

Or perhaps poverty and inequality are to blame? If people had a place in society and could afford basic things, why would they steal?

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Maybe for the boosters that grab the items, but this isn't desperation theft, it's the rise of new, effective criminal enterprises. Why has shoplifting become a lucrative criminal business for the operators who pay the actual thieves?

Because they can easily move the goods online, which wasn't the case until recently.

Because it's fun, easy, and beats working.

Unless we arrest, prosecute, and imprison them. Or punish them other ways; how about flogging? It's arguably both a better deterrent and more humane than prison.

Saying "Sure, go ahead!" is better for no one.

The issue seems less the boosters who are paid to shoplift than the operators moving the goods online profitably enough to hire an army of thieves.

No, the issue is that we don't have the political will to arrest, prosecute, and imprison criminals, until our societies consist of people who don't commit crime.

Expand mass incarceration in the U.S., which has already eclipsed the scale of Black slavery, Nazi camps, and Soviet gulags, until everybody is imprisoned?

Why not hire competent investigators to infiltrate and bring down this new model of highly profitable criminal operation (pay boosters -> warehouse goods -> move product online)?

Instead all ya got is lOcK Up TeH BooSterS?

That’s a great idea. I think we should do that. As well as lock up the boosters. If you let people steal without repercussions society goes down fast

Agreed, the lack of fines or jail time in some localities does seem to be a critical piece of the business model.

Here in Maine, our max fine of $1000 and/or a jail sentence of up to 180 days for theft sounds about right, but in turn I'm supportive of efforts to lower the local incarceration rate: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/ME.html

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