How would targeting white collar crime prevent the closure of stores because of safety concerns and store losses?
White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.
White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.
It’s usually in the context that wage theft is a much larger problem than people realize - to the point that depending on which source you choose it’s either on par or larger than other forms of theft.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850
You're right that they're not saying "wage theft is worse than murder", just "wage theft is worse than all other forms of theft"
It's important that it doesn't happen, but it's just a different order of magnitude of damage for the people sensitive to it.
I don’t think any marginalized community sees a single dime out of any white collar crime prosecution.
A lot of the crime isn’t just necessities. It’s basically stealing to sell on the side.
Yes there are exceptions of course but the people stealing things from Target and CVS are not selling those things to pay for their Mercedes. They're selling them to pay for basic necessities. That doesn't mean it's not a crime, and it shouldn't be punished, but it is a distinction worth noting.
I don't think anyone is shoplifting for food, at least in Seattle where food banks are stocked and ask few questions. They do shop lift for drugs, which is why LEGO, baby formula, and laundry detergent sections are locked down at many discount stores. It is shoplifting LEGOs to sell via a fence (this is very organized now) to get money to buy fent (often the shoplifting ring will give you drugs straight for the LEGO set you lifted).
The vast majority of the poor in the US are.. obese. Not fat, but clinically obese. For whatever failings we have, feeding the poor and the masses is not one of them. Typically when kids do "go hungry" they are Middleschoolers or younger with... abusive parents. (Which is why free lunch programs work, it bypasses shitty parents).
You expect 15 year olds to be transgressive. But when it's endemic among certain 50 year olds - that's when you have a real problem.
First, you've made the assumption here that all the shoplifters are black. The data does not support that. Most shoplifters are white kids with drug problems.
Second, you've made the assumption here that all Black people in the US are descendents of slaves. That's also incorrect and ignores hundreds of years of migration from a rich variety of countries.
Third, no, shoplifters aren't shoplifting because of "generational nihilism". They are feeding drug/alcohol habits.
You keep claiming this without qualification. It is probably very regional, but most shoplifters in my city (Seattle) are mostly white unhoused neighbors who are usually in their 20s-30s and have drug abuse problems. They aren't white suburban kids (although I'm sure it happens in the suburbs, just not in our urban area).
Obviously the shoplifters are going to be a subpopulation of the area they live in - if you live in a predominantly black neighborhood, they will trend to be more black, if you live in an older neighborhood, they will trend to be older, etc etc.
But basically the whole benefit of shoplifting is that it solves both your money problem and the "accounting for where money has gone" problem that occurs with substance abuse. If you're running a successful business and then snorting all your cash flow, that's going to show up in your books (or to your parents if it's your allowance money, etc). To sustain a substance issue, you need not only money but money reasonably free of attention.
To point three, drug/alcohol habits are often hereditary and communal. Not sure why generational nihilism and feeding drug/alcohol habits are mutually exclusive.
Between the subprime mortgage crisis and hooking 50 million people on OxyContin, this shit really takes a bite out of people's savings.