Hacker News Reader

Comment by nhoughto | Hacker News Reader

Same in SF, I assumed it was because of the homelessness problem. Seems more likely than shoplifting gangs..

The homeless population (including those in shelters and cars) is < 1% of SF's population. Even if they used products at the same rate as the rest of the population and stole 100% of what they used, they would be responsible for less than half of retail shrinkage.

Homeless people steal stuff mostly not for their own consumption, but to sell it.

Which would make this a gang problem, rather than a homeless problem.

No? Plenty of them do it as independent freelancers and fence it at less than reputable locations throughout the Tenderloin.

Do we now? Please tell me other ways homeless people are dishonest criminals in your eyes.

Of course they are stealing things for their own consumption. They are merely choosing to steal a particular thing that is easy to steal and easy to convert to cash, which they can then use to purchase the diverse things they need to survive.

Yeah good point, not something I’d properly thought about.

What if they were selling it to get money for drugs?

Does it matter?

Is there anywhere this is not the case now? At many drug stores here a lot of stuff is locked up. A lot of drug stores are woefully understaffed because they all want to rely on automated checkout and not have anyone in the store.

> Is there anywhere this is not the case now?

I just visited Texas and they didn't have this problem, but it was hella boring there. A lot of places outside the USA also don't have this problem even in the big cities.

It always amazes me that people somehow attribute solid executive criminal function to a bunch of people who can't actually keep a roof over their heads.

The shoplifting "epidemic" has been due to organized gangs for quite a while as the increasing legality of marijuana is impacting their revenue streams.

Both can be true. Being the street-level operator for a crime gang isn't exactly a union job. The people doing the actual shoplifting are variously unhoused, mentally ill, substance dependent, and desperate. It kind of depresses me how people think it's Kurt Russell with an eye patch stealing Ensure from Walgreens.

It makes the emotional aspect of the public defender more palatable in certain cases if he imagines his clients might depend on shoplifting out of absolute necessity a bit more than may actually be the case.

I read this as a joke. Touché, you've scored a point on the public defender meme account.

In case someone reads this as sincere:

This type of cognitive dissonance is neither necessary nor allowed for a public defender. In the first instance the day-to-day reality of unjust governmental administration is so insane that, not only would nobody from outside believe it, but it becomes counterproductive to engage in rationalization fantasies like the parent describes. I don't need to concoct a reason to feel sorry for my client--there are too many obvious real ones. I also don't need to feel sorry for every client to do my job well.

In the second instance, I am actually confronted by evidence all the time in a high-stakes adversarial environment. My client is going to jail for stealing diapers. If he makes up a story that he's not reselling them on ebay and I believe that story, I'd better be sure that I'm not going to get some PayPal statements in discovery the night before trial.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com