A startup helps stores give suspected shoplifters a choice: $320 or cops | Hacker News Reader

A startup helps stores give suspected shoplifters a choice: $320 or cops

slate.com

29 pointsmathattack49 comments

How is this not extortion and blackmail?

Among other things a legal threat may do the following: Constitute extortion, blackmail, or some other crime or tort involving improper threats of harm: for example, it is considered unethical, and in some cases a crime, to threaten to report criminal conduct to the police unless a settlement is reached.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_threat#Effect_of_legal_t...

Hilariously enough, Googling "blackmail threatening to report crime" and an HN post is on the first page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856066

Maybe thucydides would like to chime in here as well?

In addition to this obvious point is the fact that most people who shoplift something do it because they can't afford to buy it.

How does charging $320 fix that underlying problem? If anything, it makes it worse.

Can you provide a source for that?

In addition to this obvious point is the fact that most people who shoplift something do it because they can't afford to buy it.

Is that actually the case? It seems intuitively obvious, but I expect there are actually quite a few other reasons people end up shoplifting.

Factors that cause people to shoplift: peer pressure to possess an item they can't afford (teenagers need brand 'x' stuff to fit in), thrill seeking, mental issues (kleptomania), simple poverty.

I know quite a few people who have admitted to shoplifting in their past, often regularly, and almost exclusively from their own employer. It was often a way to express dissatisfaction with the work, or to 'compensate' for low pay. And according to them, all of their colleagues did the same, and often involved their friends too.

As a teenager I worked at McDonalds for a year. We had pants without pockets, and I was told that this was primarily to keep employees from stealing.

Why not $500 or $5000 for everybody that walks into the store, or cops...

Law enforcement should be left to law enforcement. Either you call the cops or you let them go, extra-judicial settlement is problematic for quite a few reasons, the most important of which is that you're determining guilt and setting an arbitrary price all in one go using the 'or cops' as a way to threaten a suspect.

But weren't they already determining guilt by deciding who to call the cops on? This is not the typical extra-judicial settlement since the money doesn't go to the retailer, so it doesn't seem to suffer from the same distorted incentives - there's no gain in accusing more people than before.

No, when you call the cops you have to file a complaint against the person you've detained and then the legal system takes over from there. You don't get to determine guilt.

And it's a problem especially since a large chunk of the money does not go to the retailer but to some other party who has a large incentive to get you to settle.

> You don't get to determine guilt.

But this deal does not involve determining guilt either (in any legal sense), they are merely signing an obligation to take a course.

No, they have to admit to being guilty. That's in the first paragraph of the article.

It says, right at the top of the article, that you have to sign an admission of guilt before you can sign up and pay the money.

You can bet that if the people then struggle with paying for the course, CEC will threaten to present this admission to the cops.

That document which you sign presumably stays confidential between the retailer and you (i.e. a perspective employer won't see it).

The article also states that:

If someone started to take the course and paid for it—if they change their mind and they want to get their day in court, we’ll refund their money and put the case back in the retailer’s hands. They’ve got multiple opportunities to step back from this.

So I'm not sure how the two of those square.

I'm not vouching for this sort of practice (and it's probably been abused) - but it may in fact be preferable for a dumb young teenager/adult, to take an online course, than to have theft on their criminal record (that would probably make it pretty hard to find employment, even at a crappy job).

Criminal records of teenagers are sealed by default in most jurisdictions and the slate gets wiped clean when they turn 18 or whatever the local age of majority is.

Unless you don't pay.

If you refuse to pay after the fact, and decide you should have rights after all, then the retailer can send the police your signed admission of guilt - at which point due process disappears. That admission represents credible blackmail material to get you to pay.

"Sign this sheet of paper that says you murdered someone and pay me $50,000, or I will accuse you of murder publicly"

Making this proposition is very likely a criminal offense independently of whether it would be a false police report or not.

Does that paper constitute admissible evidence in court? If so this is very dubiously legal and borders on blackmail.

Although it's probably more likely that you can't sign away or admit guilt without correct legal procedure, and such documents are simply not worth anything (i.e. like user-agreements which supposedly say you waive your rights to legal action). Would be interesting to see someone with a legal background comment on this.

CEC does have an incentive to get you to settle, but since they don't pay the security guards, how do they get to determine guilt or push the accused into settling?

It's the opposite. CEC does not do anything to prevent coercion.

And when you call the cops on an innocent person, you are in trouble as well. This means that the "loss prevention" person as well as the company have incentives to not call the police on the wrong people. With this scheme, not so much.

Not all the money goes to the retailer, but some of it does.

> Retailers can collect a cut of CEC’s $320 fee each time they present an offender with the option of signing up for the program—a form of restitution, said Caffaro, which usually ends up being around $40 per case.

Oh, I missed that. Yeah, that's fucked up.

Why not $500 or $5000 for everybody that walks into the store, or cops...

Because nearly no one would pay and they'd alienate regular customers.

We have long abolished the idea that law enforcement should only be carried out by government agents. Most western countries have more private security employees than police officers.

If this idea was ever seriously implemented in the first place. For nearly the entire history of Europe law was predominantly private.

Oh, so they will pay $320 but not $500?

Why not, let's try price elasticity on this and maximize the take.

They won't pay at all. Why would they?

Imagine you went shopping (not shop-lifting) and a store employee approached you with a "pay $300 or we will call the cops" proposition? What would be your response? Substantially different than "knock yourself out"?

Actually, for a certain amount, I would pay to avoid having to deal with the waste of time and the stress that comes from that situation. And I can see myself being willing to pay quite a bit more if I was part of a group that is perceived as more prone to shoplifting (teenager, poor or non-white).

Of course, I would then denounce them to everyone I could, from the cops to regulators to newspapers, but if I was actually a member of those groups, how would you rate the probability that I would be believed?

Well it depends, the fine for shoplifting in my state is close to 320 than to 500.

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/dec/07/civil-recovery-sc...

Summary of the issues with non-police based 'civil recovery schemes' in uk.

So, if you have the money you can walk away free, if you're poor then we're calling the cops.

This is fucked up.

According to the article, the course is free if you're below the poverty line.

This program is inherently discriminatory against people of low socio-economic status. The article clearly states that less than 2% actually qualified for a full ride, not to mention offenders from low socio-economic status are known to be less aware, or less willing to utilize these types of aid. This is seen from all sorts of offender rehabilitation programs and social aid programs. This will only lead the impoverished to be further marginalized.

Think of it this way, the man in Florida who was arrested 258 times by corrupt police for "trespassing" at his own place of work would not qualify for said program for no reason other than he was an impoverished minority, and was therefore more likely to be targeted by police and less likely to fight fraudulent charges.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512374/Florida-poli...

Basically any system which prosecutes crime is going to be biased against poor people, if for no reason other than that they are the ones most commonly stealing things. Poverty is correlated with criminal activity, which is an issue that goes beyond how stores deal with shoplifters.

> Basically any system which prosecutes crime is going to be biased against poor people

Bias indicates prejudice. It's central to every modern system of law to avoid prejudice.

> Poverty is correlated with criminal activity

Men with non-receding hairlines (no signs of baldness) are also correlated with criminal activity. It doesn't mean that they should be treated any differently by the justice system. If a person should be punished for a crime then they should be punished for the crime, not for their socio-economic background.

I don't know how US law works, but would this not be against the following law http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.72.090:

> (1) A person is guilty of bribing a witness if he or she offers, confers, or agrees to confer any benefit upon a witness or a person he or she has reason to believe is about to be called as a witness in any official proceeding or upon a person whom he or she has reason to believe may have information relevant to a criminal investigation or the abuse or neglect of a minor child, with intent to:

> (b) Induce that person to avoid legal process summoning him or her to testify; or

> (d) Induce that person to refrain from reporting information relevant to a criminal investigation or the abuse or neglect of a minor child.

That's a process to avoid bribing witnesses, not the accused, from what I can tell.

Well, that's my point. It would be illegal for the accused to do so. Surely it's also illegal to abet a crime?

But the accused isn't bribing the retailer, since the money goes to someone else (CEC).

EDIT: yes, downvoters, as I point out just below, I had missed the part where retailers get paid.

$40 of the bribe goes to the retailer:

Retailers can collect a cut of CEC’s $320 fee each time they present an offender with the option of signing up for the program—a form of restitution, said Caffaro, which usually ends up being around $40 per case.

Yeah, I had missed that part. That's fucked up.

I think the point is that the shop detective is a witness and here they are collecting bribes.

They aren't, since they don't get the money. How is it a bribe?

EDIT: someone else pointed out that retailers do get a cut, I had missed that part.

I would normally be appalled by this, but...

Slate couldn't find 1 person who felt coerced? I kept expecting them to have someone claim to have paid because he or she felt traped, but nada.

Related, while security guards might not always right, there's nothing in here that says that the choice is offered to every suspect. Maybe they only offer it to people who clearly shoplifted. The author tried, and failed, to get comment from retailers.

Those are two big missing pieces, imp.

Finally, being particularly cynical today, don't see why law enforcement should have a monopoly on coercion.

The people that paid up were paying to see the end of it, not to get interviewed afterwards. Of course they would stay the course and still want to make it go away.

Going on the record to say they felt coerced would be counter to that.

They have also signed admissions of guilt, which makes them very vulnerable.

Maybe it's just an issue of scale, but there are plenty of concrete cases where people speak out against coercion (either by law enforcement of private entities, like banks).

I agree the system can be abused, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to know how widespread the abuse is. I think the author failed to provide that.

Saying that, it's now clear to me that CEC is also failing in this respect. What system do they have in place to make sure people aren't being coerced? The hands-off approach is rather convenient to not having to be accountable.

The people alleged to be shoplifters might have to sign a kind of NDA as a part of this settlement...

I can see this amplifying the epidemic of shoplifting by the wealthy:

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/02/18/why-do-the-wealthy-sh...

I wonder if there are people that thing this is bad but plea bargaining is good.

Cops, not justice. Important distinction for non-American readers to understand what actual bargain is offered.

In most places the law says that you must have concealed something and walked towards the exit or left the store before you can be charged with shoplifting.

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