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That's laughably false propaganda. Maybe one person one time stole something for jail health care, but the hundreds of thousands of other shoplifters do it for other reasons, ranging from being unable or unwilling to control their childish I-want-that impulses to being part of organized crime rings.

To pretend shoplifting at its core stems from not having socialized health care is the height of chicanery.

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I mean, yours is just as false by putting everything in a different container.

The issue is all this stuff is complex and multiple causative.

For example metal thefts are by far going to be executed by two groups. 1. Criminal gangs stealing large amounts at once. 2. Methheads looking for anything they can sell for their next fix.

Group 2 can certainly be helped with clinics and healthcare.

I find it bizarre you imagine a world where immoral or amoral persons are somehow not at fault for their own behavior. When some turd goes into a Walgreen's on Market St. in SF and fills a bag with goods to resell, they aren't doing it because society made them do it. They aren't stealing to feed themselves or their kids. They're doing it simply because they can and they don't find anything wrong with it.

The drug users stealing copper can only be helped if they truly want the help. A great many are not ready for that help yet. As San Francisco has amply shown, no amount of money poured into the existing homeless industrial complex will change that fact.

See, I imagine you live in a black and white world where people are good and bad. Bad people do things like steal from walgreens and should be punished with death. Good people simply make mistakes, like steal hundreds of thousands via wage theft from their employees, and when they are caught they should be forced to pay 1% of that as a fine.

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