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Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

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Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#101

Post by WalterGR »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #84
tomlockwood wrote: post #25

I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.

This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. The DA has made clear they won't prosecute these crimes so the shoplifters have no fear of getting caught and know they will be released soon.

From the article:

The top five cities for organized retail crime, in order, were Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

By “the DA” you are probably referring to the DA of the #5 city?

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#102

Post by tomlockwood »

mynameishere wrote: post #80
tomlockwood wrote: post #25

I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.

What a perfectly irrational thing to say. "We've got to go easy on these derelicts... because there are so many, and so many are even worse!"

I'm purely making an argument against the reflex to demand harsher punishments. If harsher punishment always worked to deter criminals, we'd have the death penalty for every crime.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#103

Post by tagoregrtst »

14 wrote: post #56

Let’s continue our wage disparity and see how that Plays out. We have rising homeless rates it can only get worst. If I am already homeless I may as well attempt to shoplift as jail is 3 hots and a cot as they say.

With a side of sodomy.

Prison in America is unjustly violent. The only thing I agree with progressives is that, if there’s no room to jail someone humanely, they shouldn't be in jail.

This to say, the homeless doesn’t want to go to jail for a warm meal. He knows his local DA isnt punishing crime.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#104

Post by buscoquadnary »

tomlockwood wrote: post #99
buscoquadnary wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. The DA has made clear they won't prosecute these crimes so the shoplifters have no fear of getting caught and know they will be released soon.

> This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. Is that true? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop...

The article you have provided is from 2018 and primarily deals with a single individual that had several other outstanding warrants, it has no bearing on what was stated prior.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#105

Post by shakezula »

tomlockwood wrote: post #25

I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.

I’d also like anyone who promotes harsher punishments to actually go through the system for just a day before they insist on locking others into it.

Getting arrested permanently changed my view on our justice system. It was a nonviolent offense, related to a paperwork issue, but it resulted in a bench warrant being issued for me.

If I hadn’t just received several thousand dollars in my account from an unexpected windfall, I would not have been able to pay the jail fees. Not fines for the ticket - which was completely dropped - the jail fees for simply being arrested.

The total out the door cost to get arrested was north of $2100 for me. You can beat the case, but you can’t beat the ride.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#106

Post by WalterGR »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #70
WalterGR wrote: post #59

Some companies are lying about why they’re closing stores. For example, Walgreens announced in 2019 that it would shutter 200 stores. Blaming shoplifting sounds like some serious Chamber of Commerce spin to direct attention away from them abandoning locations and the jobs that go with them, and to give ammunition to pro-corporate pro-policing factions.

So what is the real reason they're closing the stores? I want to hear the rest of the conspiracy theory :(

The word of big business is truth and doubting it is a conspiracy theory? That’s a bit of a leap.

Anyway, TFA links to more reading in its final paragraph. Look for the link in the following text:

but: An analysis of crime statistics and other reporting by The Atlantic cast doubt on what it called the "great shoplifting freak-out," citing "fuzzy data" and asserting that what's being lumped together as shoplifting is actually a variety of violent crimes.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#107

Post by foogazi »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #38
ameminator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if the people running the store can't profitably operate (due to theft or other factors), why should they operate? Why should the owners of that supermarket go into ruin just to give you another shopping option? Why is it their responsibility to keep you fed at all?

Why should firefighters put out fires? They make no money from it. It costs them money in equipment wear, water usage, etc.!

Because they get paid to do it - they literally make money from fighting fires

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#108

Post by nine_k »

notthemessiah wrote: post #76
e4e78a06 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both problems that can be attacked independently. You can crack down hard on shoplifters and reselling rings but also build lots of new housing. Price of rent is a function of housing supply and demand. Rent control just pushes the costs to less visible things like security deposit, maintenance, etc.

They're more interconnected than at first glace. When ambitious people can't be stakeholders in the economy due to NIMBY gatekeepers, they resort to less socially-acceptable means of getting ahead and making it big. I don't think "reselling rings" are that easy to crack down on, they probably are not rings at all rely on apps and services and operate on a more individual basis. The very framing of such is just used t…

I suppose you're not suggesting that people whose ambition to become business leaders is hindered by high rent turn to running criminal rings?

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#109

Post by rsj_hn »

tomlockwood wrote: post #99
buscoquadnary wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. The DA has made clear they won't prosecute these crimes so the shoplifters have no fear of getting caught and know they will be released soon.

> This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. Is that true? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop...

I don't think that they literally meant "no one", but rather that a small group of people commit a majority of the crimes, and if those people were behind bars, the crimes rates would fall back to normal levels.

There is evidence to support this thesis. First, we do know that a small group of people commit most of the crimes. Second, we see that in the U.S. when we let people out of institutions the crime rate went up until mass incarceration removed a roughly equivalent amount of people from society.

So there are about 2 million people who commit a huge number of crimes, and we need to decide, as a society, whether to lock these people up or live with the higher crime rates. I don't think there is much evidence that criminals can actually be treated somehow to be reformed, they are either tolerated* or warehoused until they age out.

(*) One middle ground of toleration you see in developing countries is creating zones where crimes can be committed more freely and rich people can buy their own security or live in zones where crimes are punished. Then criminals learn to avoid those zones. That's what a lot of nations (such as Argentina) do which have a large criminal class (like the U.S.) but that can't afford the costs of mass incarceration. They create geographic bubbles in which crime is low.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#110

Post by tomlockwood »

berberous wrote: post #96
tomlockwood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves. It'd appear though that given probability, an American is more likely to be in jail than the citizen of any other country, but even with this high threat of jail, these crimes seem to be on the rise.

America is a huge country, with a state and local laws that are inconsistent over both geography and time. It can be true that we over jail and impose longer sentences in some places, in some past eras, and/or for some crimes, to no good effect, while also in other places, other times, or for certain crimes, under punish such that there is zero deterrent effect when there needs to be at least some.

Since America is such a huge outlier in terms of jailing people, my thinking is that we ought to compare America to other similar countries and see what the differences are. Pressing the "harsher punishments" button would seem premature, in my view.
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