Were Walmart instead employing more-extensive private security, then I can see people complaining about that instead. Heck, I remember angry articles about how

Were Walmart instead employing more-extensive private security, then I can see people complaining about that instead. Heck, I remember angry articles about how private security guard persuade folks to sign documents admitting guilt &c. Instead, Walmart is handing the problem over to the public authorities. This seems intuitively fair: why shouldn't a poor person accused of shoplifting have access to the same presumption of innocence and procedural safeguards as a rich person? People are going to steal. Theft hurts Walmart, but it also hurts poor people, who will have to pay the increased prices (or decreased service) that Walmart would require in order to offset the cost of theft (or perhaps Walmart will go out of business, and poor people will be stuck paying even higher prices still). The real problem is the amount of crime. Fix that, and none of this is a problem.