You have to prove it was stolen, not just a mistake, miscalculation, accident, lost mail, and a blizzard of other possibilities.
You can't just "know it", you have to prove it.
You can't just "know it", you have to prove it.
You aren’t proving that a physical item that should be in one location has in fact been moved to another. You’re proving that the reason some dollars haven’t been moved from one place to another is that the perpetrator intended to withhold those dollars.
That could be changed though. Criminalize the simple fact of underpayment, as opposed to requiring intent, and I imagine wage theft would rates would go down? …But beware unintended consequences. You don’t necessarily want to throw the neighborhood baker into jail because she bounced a paycheck.
Personally, I’ve never seen or heard of a single person have any repercussions for shoplifting, and I’ve seen a _lot_ of shoplifting in Seattle.