Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions • Hacker News Board

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#201

Post by Ekaros » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #11

TedShiller wrote: post #2

Let the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.

Why should my grocery store close because people are stealing things from it? What do I do, just starve?

Because you and other people in the community aren't filling the other side of social contract. That is ensuring that store can operate without unnecessary losses from you or your community members stealing from it. It is in the end your failing of making operation possible.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#202

Post by tomlockwood » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 11:44 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #198

tomlockwood wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing. I'm not defending stealing, I'm saying for all crime in America, the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. That button has already been pressed, hard.

Even if prison were completely ineffective as a deterrent, that wouldn't be a reason to not use it, because criminals can't rob any more stores while they're imprisoned.

Awesome, we should send the shoplifting rate to zero, by imprisoning, everyone!

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#203

Post by jjj123 » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

disambiguation wrote: post #159

MattGaiser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider another few possibilities. 1. Americans are just more likely to be criminals. 2. Other nations may be equally or even more ineffective at tackling crime. The assumption that jail doesn't work rests on the assumption that other nations track crime as effectively and that their people are equally criminal.

1. Quickly becomes an uncomfortable conversation for most people when you look at the crime stats breakdown by demographic.

Is it uncomfortable? Crime is pretty clearly a systemic issue. If we all were secure in food, housing, and healthcare do you think crime rates would be as high as they are?

What demographics in the US do you think are least likely to be secure in food, housing, and healthcare?

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#204

Post by andreskytt » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

Isn’t it because a lot of people no longer consider stealing morally wrong? There’s an outside voice saying “you deserve this, they’ve got insurance, it’s ok” and the inner voice no longer reponds with “that’s not ok”. Might that be the consequence of too much focus on all sorts of external moral factors telling us what is and is not offensive, perimissible?

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#205

Post by ahh » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

gaganyaan wrote: post #180

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got a way of reducing recidivism, we'd all love to see it. In the meantime, though, throwing insults at ahh doesn't actually refute his/her position.

It's not a secret, it's common sense: > Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world; in 2016, only 20% of inmates re-offended within 5 years. [...] Norway's prisons are renowned for being some of the best and most humane in the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway Treat people like people, it's that simple. Attitudes like ahh's arise from not expanding past using their lizard…

You are welcome to advocate for pleasant, humane prisons. Run whatever antirecidivism campaigns you wish there. If they work, that's great.

In either case: send people who commit crime to those prisons. If they do it again, send them back.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#206

Post by selimthegrim » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

azth wrote: post #183

selimthegrim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islamic Sharia.

Quoted post unavailable.

The last person to tell me that also told me that my parents should be executed because they were Ahmedis.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#207

Post by maxwell » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

ahh wrote: post #149

maxwell wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue seems less the boosters who are paid to shoplift than the operators moving the goods online profitably enough to hire an army of thieves.

No, the issue is that we don't have the political will to arrest, prosecute, and imprison criminals, until our societies consist of people who don't commit crime.

Expand mass incarceration in the U.S., which has already eclipsed the scale of Black slavery, Nazi camps, and Soviet gulags, until everybody is imprisoned?

Why not hire competent investigators to infiltrate and bring down this new model of highly profitable criminal operation (pay boosters -> warehouse goods -> move product online)?

Instead all ya got is lOcK Up TeH BooSterS?

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#208

Post by josephcsible » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

tomlockwood wrote: post #202

josephcsible wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if prison were completely ineffective as a deterrent, that wouldn't be a reason to not use it, because criminals can't rob any more stores while they're imprisoned.

Awesome, we should send the shoplifting rate to zero, by imprisoning, everyone!

I'm not saying to imprison everyone, obviously. I'm saying to imprison everyone who steals.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#209

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #196

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they don't want jobs and don't want off drugs? Can we force them? We can throw all the money we want at this problem, but at the end of the day, the person has to be somewhat willing to get their life back together, or we are just waiting it. It is not like most of them didn't have housing/work before their addiction started. The "I got addicted to drugs because I lost my housing and job" isn't as common as t…

A good chunk of the people arguing to throw them all in prison are probably one good car accident away from getting hooked on opiates to get through the chronic back pain and winding up like them. Might be you. And you cannot force people to stop drugs, but most of them really don't want to be doing what they're doing, but they need a way out to be there when they try to find it. Tossing them in jail doesn't work and…

So if we can’t fix people that easily once they get addicted to drugs, let’s spend most of our resources trying to prevent addiction in the first place. I’m all for throwing a ton of resources at at-risk kids and making addiction prevention during hospitalizations a number one priority. It’s just that the problem becomes too hard to solve once the damage is done, so focus on avoiding the damage.

And now you know the secret of all those European countries that have less crime and drug problems than we do.

Re: Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

#210

Post by disambiguation » Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

jjj123 wrote: post #203

disambiguation wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Quickly becomes an uncomfortable conversation for most people when you look at the crime stats breakdown by demographic.

Is it uncomfortable? Crime is pretty clearly a systemic issue. If we all were secure in food, housing, and healthcare do you think crime rates would be as high as they are? What demographics in the US do you think are least likely to be secure in food, housing, and healthcare?

It is because you're kidding yourself if you try to explain it as purely socio economic, and a lot of people don't want to go there.

For example, men dominate the prison and violent crime demographics compared to women.