171–180 of 356 posts
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Being stabbed to death would be a less painful and drawn-out alternative to being sued for the thief's medical bills.
European here. I thought the thief would now(after obamacare) have insurance?
Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. - If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets. - Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but…
I think the problem is not catching the bike thieves, more that the punishment given for stealing bikes is minimal, so it's not worth the police doing much about it.
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This brings to mind Alan Turing's bicycle in Cryptonomicon: "So Turing can leave his bicycle anywhere and be confident that, if stolen, it won’t go more than a fifth of a kilometer before the chain falls off." The whole passage (it relates eventually to Enigma and Cipher Text) is a good read: http://www.euskalnet.net/larraorma/crypto/slide18.html Of course, the whole book is a good read, so skip the link and head to…
Any pics of this mechanism?
Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. - If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets. - Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but…
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But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. Then using RFID or similar technology, you could embed a RFID tag somewhere in the frame. Then allow someone to report a stolen bike with a police report, very similar to a stolen vehicle report and then using remote scanners you could scan for stolen bikes very easi…
But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. In legal terms, you'd have a problem with proportionality —that is, the idea that the punishment needs to fit the crime. This is partially a problem with fairness and partially a problem with incentives: if you give someone the same punishment for, say, stealing a bi…
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> Actually, purchasing stolen goods is illegal in most places, full stop. In my state, the statute says "such person knowing or having reasonable grounds to believe the same to have been feloniously stolen or taken". I doubt any state makes receiving stolen goods in complete ignorance a crime. However, the stolen goods are generally recoverable by the original owner, whether or not the person receiving them purchased…
>However, the stolen goods are generally recoverable by the original owner, whether or not the person receiving them purchased them in good faith. This is good. Usually there is just a demand for bikes. With this system there will be a demand for non-stolen bikes. The prices for stolen bikes go down and so does stealing them.
If the buyer did not know the bike was stolen, this will only punish the buyer and have no effect on the price of bicycles, since one cannot distinguish between a stolen vs. non-stolen bike (short of, say, suspiciously low prices, which has been called out elsewhere in this thread as a non-issue).
I wonder what would happen if the criminal world started experiencing hyperdeflation?
Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. - If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets. - Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but…
How about a pressurized U-lock that releases a neon-pink paint cloud if the cylinder or restraining bar is cut-through? I guess the trick would be making it get on the thief and all over the bicycle. The best would be if it also stank to high heaven.
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considered drugs in this case, but couldn't figure out how that would work; how would you prevent theft (from your would-be customer)? there’s no conceivable way i can think of to present a drug for someone to ‘check-out’ without enabling that person to steal it..
I've been reading a lot of books on the subject lately and I think that's exactly how a lot street-level dealers (the lowest ranked members of the empire) are operating. The dealer would hide their product somewhere close by, for example in an empty soda can in a garbage bin or in a crack in the pavement. Once a client has made a purchase the dealer would tell the client where his stuff is hidden and the client can t…
Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. - If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets. - Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but…
Or just plain old boring regular enforcement, like Germany and Japan have, which is how they end up with a far lower crime rate than the US or the UK for example.
(They also have a better social safety net, that's part of their low crime rates too.)