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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

AND limit future thefts by the same people, and likely dissuade future thieves.

If you put the bike thieves in jail, sure. And when your e-bike gets stolen, you may well think you want them in jail. But the next week, the New York Times writes an article about how there are too many non-violent offenders in jail and the incarceration crisis is a national shame. Now the e-bike owner is outraged and wants the thief out of jail. It's not trivial to come up with a punishment that will deter the thieves without also deterring the voters from seeing it administered.

I don't think it's even about putting them in jail for a long time. The current situation has basically zero downsides to stealing a bike. You take it, you sell it, you have cash. The police don't care, they won't even investigate.

If the chances of getting caught for this sort of crime were non-zero, even if the repercussions were a heavy fine, it would hopefully make people think twice before getting involved in it.

With near zero downside, you get rampant crime in particular categories, as seen in San Francisco, or joyriding by underage kids.

How do you think a heavy fine works in practice? You tell the bike thief he needs to pay $1000. He doesn't pay. Then what? You garnish the wages from the regular job he doesn't have? (His actual job is bike thief.) You send bounty hunters?!

Let's say you finally manage to impound his car. Now there's an article about how people's lives are being ruined because of fines and mere misdemeanors. We're back to square one.

I agree. Increasing penalties is a knee-jerk reaction for some kinds of. politician; but it doesn't have any effect, because people don't get caught anyway. If there's a high risk of being caught, the thief might consider another trade.

Yeah, I know, that might just be shifting the problem - he could take up online fraud, or burglary, or mugging instead.

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