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Actually it does make financial sense. Here's why. Bike theft in many places now has an enormous reward/risk ratio not because the reward is large but because
by ScottBurson 10y ago
Actually it does make financial sense. Here's why. Bike theft in many places now has an enormous reward/risk ratio not because the reward is large but because the risk is so minuscule -- small enough to be considered zero. People tend to think that the police would have to solve and prosecute a large fraction of bike thefts to deter the crime effectively, but that's probably not true. Any chance at all of being caught would cut the reward/risk ratio by two or three orders of magnitude, at least. Because the reward for the crime is relatively small, compared to other things a professional thief could be doing, that is likely to serve as a sufficient deterrent in many cases.
I've read that this has been tried somewhere and seems to work, though I don't recall the details. A municipality just needs to dedicate a small fraction of its resources to solving as many bike thefts as possible. Even if that's a small fraction of the total, it can be enough to turn the tide.
- zerooneinfinity 10y agoSame problem with people hopping turnstyles in the 80's. They increased the severity of the punishment and lo behold the crime went down.
- brianwawok 10y agoSome people were having trouble with guys on the corner smoking pot in the 80s. So we started the war in drugs. Lo And behold crime went down.... Oh wait..
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoI know you're being facetious, but it's much more difficult to evaluate risk/rewards ratio for drug use, and the motivation for engaging in it is less linked to this ratio than for other crimes. Though I say that, and think back to Prohibition... which didn't involve the same addictive properties to which I'd attribute these properties of the War on Drugs, so I doubt myself.
- brianwawok 10y agoI don't have answers either. You need punishment to prevent some crimes I think. But at some point it stops helping and it just hurts. Or perhaps we need another way to influence behavior. State mandated morality? Meh