9 ms·

Wal-Mart Suspends a Controversial Shoplifting Punishment

66 points by ourmandave 9y ago

danschumann 9y ago
K.. So on one hand, security guards are going mad with power, and not wise about it, threatening people and basically shaking them down. On the other hand, if there was a real educational program that worked, and it was only used on actual criminals, it could provide competition to the state's very bad recidivism rate. I think rehabilitation is one of the hardest things you can do, since you almost have to care about someone more than they care about themselves. It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president.
- adventured 9y ago
  > It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president. When he isn't busy pushing real-estate bubble investing in Canada and other shady financial ideas. Whatever Robbins was 20 years ago, he isn't that any longer. I suspect he simply acquired the desire to make a lot more money with his platform, which lured him into becoming a financial guru. Lately he has been talking about Bitcoin, because he's now Mr Investing Guru.
  - danschumann 9y ago
    His book Money: Master the Game was really good. His in-person stuff can be really expensive. Hopefully he doesn't end up like Jim Rohn, who was great, but then spent his golden years at herbalife. Jim Rohn's early stuff was so great though.. yea.. I haven't seen Tony totally sell out though, hopefully he doesn't. Where does Robbins push bubble investing in Canada?
trav4225 9y ago
Mercy == hate, apparently.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I’d hate to trust in the mercy of WalMart.
  - trav4225 9y ago
    then let them bring charges. :-) no one's being forced to do a single thing here. it's a fake injustice.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Of course the typical Walmart shoplifter will be educated about the law and have ready access to legal advice. /s Edit: To Rowdown... Even better HN could charge a fee for throwaways and donate the proceeds to legal aid funds. You’d be doing a lot of good.
      - rowdown 9y ago
        Yes, the problem is we need to educate our petty criminals better and reduce the penalities for petty crime. We can pay for it by increasing parking tickets and car pool lane violations.
      - trav4225 9y ago
        I hear ya. I just see that angle (education) as being a tangential issue. If Walmart's purpose here is indeed to exploit people's ignorance rather than to give them a second chance, then I'm with you 100%. :)
- X86BSD 9y ago
  Indeed it does. Try feeding the homeless with cooked food about to be thrown out in most states.
im3w1l 9y ago
I thought "extortion" (ask for money and threat of legal action) was how settlements were supposed to work. Will this set a precedent and have broader consequences?
- eck 9y ago
  IANAL but threat of filing a lawsuit and threat of reporting criminal activity to authorities are not equivalent.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  Apparently some believe only prosecutors are allowed to have such discretion. They guard their power jealously. I wonder of the prosecutor who was talking about using his discretion understood the irony of what he was saying or the hypocrisy of his position.
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    > “I heard her pitch, and I just said, ‘No way,’” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore. “The justice system should never be a profit system.” > Mr. Marquis said his office prosecutes serial shoplifters, but police send him few cases involving first-time offenders. When they do, Mr. Marquis is likely to give the shoplifter a citation and order him or her to perform community service, he said. What irony? What hypocrisy? The discretion been referenced in that quote is not the prosecutor's but that of the police who send him cases. The only irony I see here is that a program designed to help first time offenders actually ends up being worse for them, because first time offenders rarely get prosecuted?
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Settlements are for civil cases, not criminal. This was demanding money in exchange for not revealing evidence of a crime to authorities, which is extortion. It would be perfectly legal for Walmart to settle with the shoplifter under an agreement to not sue them. Criminal cases are the state vs. the citizen, whereas civil cases are citizen vs. citizen. (The same action can result in both types of cases.) You're not supposed to profit by inhibiting the state from prosecuting.
scoggs 9y ago
I'd think so long as the government got their tax portion of the money paid to Walmart / Corrective Education Co. and Turning Point Justice by offenders that they wouldn't care?
username223 9y ago
> ...allegations by a woman who said a security guard at a Goodwill store in Orange, Calif., threatened her with jail unless she paid $500 for the education program,... The woman, Debra Black, left the store without paying for a $2 purse she had placed on the arm of her wheelchair while she was browsing and forgotten about,... Jesus. I was just reading about this somewhere else, and the deal is basically that suspected shoplifters are locked in a room, given misleading information, and pressured to sign a confession which will be used against them if they later have second thoughts about paying $500 to the "education" company. These companies make payday lenders look good.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  That sounds like a crime. Maybe prosecute that instead of get rid of a program that appears to have some demonstrable up sides.
  - lurr 9y ago
    Does this program have upsides? Saves time and money at the cost of trampling on people's rights is not an upside. Are these people being given lawyers? Are they being told what their rights are? Do they have an accurate understanding of the punishment they face if they tell walmart no?
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    It's all a crime (at least in California). It's called 'extortion'. The program certainly has upsides for the for-profit company running the program and for the for-profit store receiving 'restitution' from participants. However, please, demonstrate the the people being extorted have an up side in this. If this program were truly about helping these people, it would be run by a non-profit and funded by the stores and/or the police departments rather than by extorting people.
    - loeg 9y ago
      > However, please, demonstrate the the people being extorted have an up side in this. Having to go through the legal system as a criminal defendant can easily exceed $300-500. And whether you are convicted or not, your mugshot may be public forever, with long-lasting potential economic impacts. If there wasn't an upside, people wouldn't pay. 90% of suspects paying shows that the suspects think there is an upside.
barsonme 9y ago
Would this be as controversial if they money went to a third-party (i.e., not a Wal-Mart-run) charity? The idea is something good—keeping low-level, non-violent offenders out of the legal system and saving taxpayer dollars. But it does seem to fit the bill for extortion: Wal-Mart protecting the shoplifter from the government in exchange for money. I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds?
- lurr 9y ago
  > The idea is something good—keeping low-level, non-violent offenders out of the legal system by turning a corporation into the legal system. This is an awful idea.
- menacingly 9y ago
  Yeah. I'm sure, since humans in general were involved, it was not altruistically designed. However, Walmart's scale probably means that they're more interested in reducing the instance of shoplifting as a trend, rather than bilking some individual for an amount they've already wasted talking to them.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A non-profit first-offender education program funded by the police department and/or stores that doesn't require payment by participants would not be extortion and would have the same positive effects without the same incentives for abuse.
  - dotancohen 9y ago
    Why was this insightful comment downvoted?
    - barsonme 9y ago
      You are aware what website you're on, right? ;)
bsder 9y ago
The fact that these programs even exist is a gigantic indictment of our justice system ...
menacingly 9y ago
My opinion hinges on how sleazy the conversations are in those rooms. On the surface, it's a cool idea to give shoplifters an option before you involve the police. You can't ensure that the sell is universally honest, so it's always going to have that risk. Then again, from my understanding it's not as if the police are either, so I guess any public conversation about innovative solutions to deal with common minor crime is good.
crispytx 9y ago
"violates state extortion laws." That's great. Hope they lock up those criminals in suits. Our country has a bad problem with letting guys in suits break the law as long as they do so while working for a corporation.
downandout 9y ago
This would likely be legal if they took a different approach. They can't say "pay us or we will report you to the police," because that is textbook extortion. However, that doesn't need to be said. Shoplifters know what the worst case is. They could simply say "you have the option to sign this civil agreement, which includes fees that you must pay and a non-disclosure agreement - we will not disclose the existence of this matter to anyone outside of Wal-Mart". Lawyers do this in civil negotiations all the time, with the implied threat of criminal prosecution without the actual threat. I also find it ironic and somewhat disturbing that prosecutors are mentioned throughout the article essentially saying that the State should have a monopoly on extortion because of the legal protections afforded to criminal defendants. Legal protections in the US are only as good as the lawyer you can afford to hire, and if you're shoplifting from Wal-Mart, the odds that you can afford a decent attorney are about zero. A cynical person might say that perhaps prosecutors are making such a big deal about this because a decrease in shoplifting calls will result in less work, overtime pay, etc. for police, jail/prison guards, probation officers, prosecutors, etc. They don't want to stop feeding the monster.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  >I also find it ironic and somewhat disturbing that prosecutors are mentioned throughout the article essentially saying that the State should have a monopoly on extortion because of the legal protections afforded to criminal defendants. What article are you reading? Only one current prosecutor is mentioned who states an opinion on the program, and he says: “The justice system should never be a profit system.” The second mentioned prosecutor doesn't have any quotes, but did sue Corrective Education for extortion and false imprisonment. The third mentioned (former) prosecutor is the founder of one of the companies. Your statement is pretty blatantly false. The one government official who does (explicitly) say that the State should have a monopoly on extortion is California Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn, who issued the injunction against Corrective Education.
  - downandout 9y ago
    You're being pedantic, but you kind of made my point for me. As you point out in great detail, all of these prosecutors object to private companies doing what they do in the name of the State every single day (extort people). Some of them are acting on the objection by suing the program, others are quoted speaking out against it, etc.
ourmandave 9y ago
At a lot of big retailers try to make you sign a "confession" whether they call the police or not. Later you get a letter from a law firm demanding hundreds of dollars or they'll take you to small claims to recoup their cost for "investigative expenses". With the promise that the amount will go up if you don't settle. This is completely separate from any criminal charges and paying them doesn't effect any outcome of that at all. But if you don't know that you're likely to pay to get them to "drop the charges". http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay-security-costs-1.912834 http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay-secu...
gumby 9y ago
> officials questioned the legality of asking people for money under threat of criminal sanctions Thank goodness -- the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence. You can argue as to how effective that is (I believe it's commonly believed to be ineffective, though for reasons that are polar opposites depending on political views).
- gumby 9y ago
  Holy cow, -1 points. I'm not complaining, just amazed there are enough people who really think private sector criminal enforcement† is a good idea. No thanks, the word for that is "vigilanteism". I am concerned that there is a privatized legal system and glad that at least Wal Mart has stopped. †(private sector civil resolution --arbitration -- is often a good idea when there is not a huge power imbalance)
justboxing 9y ago
> Shoplifting suspects at stores that use Corrective Education are shown a video and given 72 hours to decide whether to enter the program. The video describes a six-to-eight-hour online course that promises to explain “why you make decisions that are harmful or illegal” and teach “life skills.” 6-to-8 gours sounds ridiculously long / excessive. "Life skills", really? I smell a scam here, some "educational company" partnered with them and sell them pay-per-participant exhorbitant fees for watching their "video course".
bahmboo 9y ago
1 - making companies pay for their own property security. good. 2 - having those programs pay for themselves (so they aren't cut and put back on society). good. 3 - coercing people in a compromised state for profit. not good. 4 - Room for improvement. Yes.
holografix 9y ago
I wonder if there's someone in Walmart, an accountant of sorts, who sits down and runs a report on all the money they made from desperate people shoplifting stuff on a yearly basis. Prob the same person who looked at that 0.01% of revenue been squandered away by shoplifters and thought: What if we made that a source of revenue? Where would this perverse incentive lead? Using commonly stolen goods as lure, maybe in a spot of the store where there's a false sense of privacy then waiting for the perp at the outside and saying: "Surprise, pay us $300 for that $100 dollar thing you were going to stole or you go to jail!" Boggles the mind
drewmol 9y ago
I'm on the fence. It's always interesting when a victim has a say in wether a crime gets prosecuted, which often leads to a situation where said victim may use that power to encourage an outcome that is preferable to both them and the perpetrator than letting the justice system handle it in typical fashion. I'd prefer if home break-ins don't get handled in a "Pay me $x and watch this video or we'll be forced to prosecute" BC while that may be better for both parties, it's likely worse for the rest of society. Not sure how I feel about petty theft being handled this way.
- bb88 9y ago
  You have a good point on the home breakins. But I think it's the way Walmart is doing it that's the problem. Walmart should just get one choice, either a criminal charge or a civil agreement. They can't be allowed to threaten both.
  - drewmol 9y ago
    Hmmm... I don't know how it should be handled, but trying to prevent Walmart from taking this couse of action seems like it would be difficult to enforce within the constrainst of our legal system. Maybe a blanket policy that if you attempt to blackmail/extort/coerse someone into participating in some arrangement of alternative justice (outside the legal system) by using the threat of prosecution, you lose your legal standing as a victim, and therefore your ability to enforce prosecution? Let's say I was raped, and then attempt to extort money from the rapist in leiu of filing charges, I certainly think I would lose some credibility as a victim, and it's unfair to society who deserves knowledge of the potential threat, at minimum. It's important to recognize that the law someone violates is a crime against society as a whole, not just a crime against the particular victim. In this situation, the law is against shoplifting in general (society as a whole can be the victim), not against shoplifting FROM Walmart, so we should be careful to not let Walmart deprive society of our ability to enforce the agreed upon consequences.

66 points by ourmandave 9y ago

K.. So on one hand, security guards are going mad with power, and not wise about it, threatening people and basically shaking them down. On the other hand, if there was a real educational program that worked, and it was only used on actual criminals, it could provide competition to the state's very bad recidivism rate. I think rehabilitation is one of the hardest things you can do, since you almost have to care about someone more than they care about themselves. It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president.

adventured 9y ago
> It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president. When he isn't busy pushing real-estate bubble investing in Canada and other shady financial ideas. Whatever Robbins was 20 years ago, he isn't that any longer. I suspect he simply acquired the desire to make a lot more money with his platform, which lured him into becoming a financial guru. Lately he has been talking about Bitcoin, because he's now Mr Investing Guru.
- danschumann 9y ago
  His book Money: Master the Game was really good. His in-person stuff can be really expensive. Hopefully he doesn't end up like Jim Rohn, who was great, but then spent his golden years at herbalife. Jim Rohn's early stuff was so great though.. yea.. I haven't seen Tony totally sell out though, hopefully he doesn't. Where does Robbins push bubble investing in Canada?

trav4225 9y ago

Mercy == hate, apparently.

QAPereo 9y ago
I’d hate to trust in the mercy of WalMart.
- trav4225 9y ago
  then let them bring charges. :-) no one's being forced to do a single thing here. it's a fake injustice.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Of course the typical Walmart shoplifter will be educated about the law and have ready access to legal advice. /s Edit: To Rowdown... Even better HN could charge a fee for throwaways and donate the proceeds to legal aid funds. You’d be doing a lot of good.
    - rowdown 9y ago
      Yes, the problem is we need to educate our petty criminals better and reduce the penalities for petty crime. We can pay for it by increasing parking tickets and car pool lane violations.
    - trav4225 9y ago
      I hear ya. I just see that angle (education) as being a tangential issue. If Walmart's purpose here is indeed to exploit people's ignorance rather than to give them a second chance, then I'm with you 100%. :)
X86BSD 9y ago
Indeed it does. Try feeding the homeless with cooked food about to be thrown out in most states.

im3w1l 9y ago

I thought "extortion" (ask for money and threat of legal action) was how settlements were supposed to work. Will this set a precedent and have broader consequences?

eck 9y ago
IANAL but threat of filing a lawsuit and threat of reporting criminal activity to authorities are not equivalent.
tomohawk 9y ago
Apparently some believe only prosecutors are allowed to have such discretion. They guard their power jealously. I wonder of the prosecutor who was talking about using his discretion understood the irony of what he was saying or the hypocrisy of his position.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > “I heard her pitch, and I just said, ‘No way,’” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore. “The justice system should never be a profit system.” > Mr. Marquis said his office prosecutes serial shoplifters, but police send him few cases involving first-time offenders. When they do, Mr. Marquis is likely to give the shoplifter a citation and order him or her to perform community service, he said. What irony? What hypocrisy? The discretion been referenced in that quote is not the prosecutor's but that of the police who send him cases. The only irony I see here is that a program designed to help first time offenders actually ends up being worse for them, because first time offenders rarely get prosecuted?
jessriedel 9y ago
Settlements are for civil cases, not criminal. This was demanding money in exchange for not revealing evidence of a crime to authorities, which is extortion. It would be perfectly legal for Walmart to settle with the shoplifter under an agreement to not sue them. Criminal cases are the state vs. the citizen, whereas civil cases are citizen vs. citizen. (The same action can result in both types of cases.) You're not supposed to profit by inhibiting the state from prosecuting.

scoggs 9y ago

I'd think so long as the government got their tax portion of the money paid to Walmart / Corrective Education Co. and Turning Point Justice by offenders that they wouldn't care?

username223 9y ago

> ...allegations by a woman who said a security guard at a Goodwill store in Orange, Calif., threatened her with jail unless she paid $500 for the education program,... The woman, Debra Black, left the store without paying for a $2 purse she had placed on the arm of her wheelchair while she was browsing and forgotten about,... Jesus. I was just reading about this somewhere else, and the deal is basically that suspected shoplifters are locked in a room, given misleading information, and pressured to sign a confession which will be used against them if they later have second thoughts about paying $500 to the "education" company. These companies make payday lenders look good.

tomohawk 9y ago
That sounds like a crime. Maybe prosecute that instead of get rid of a program that appears to have some demonstrable up sides.
- lurr 9y ago
  Does this program have upsides? Saves time and money at the cost of trampling on people's rights is not an upside. Are these people being given lawyers? Are they being told what their rights are? Do they have an accurate understanding of the punishment they face if they tell walmart no?
- shkkmo 9y ago
  It's all a crime (at least in California). It's called 'extortion'. The program certainly has upsides for the for-profit company running the program and for the for-profit store receiving 'restitution' from participants. However, please, demonstrate the the people being extorted have an up side in this. If this program were truly about helping these people, it would be run by a non-profit and funded by the stores and/or the police departments rather than by extorting people.
  - loeg 9y ago
    > However, please, demonstrate the the people being extorted have an up side in this. Having to go through the legal system as a criminal defendant can easily exceed $300-500. And whether you are convicted or not, your mugshot may be public forever, with long-lasting potential economic impacts. If there wasn't an upside, people wouldn't pay. 90% of suspects paying shows that the suspects think there is an upside.

barsonme 9y ago

Would this be as controversial if they money went to a third-party (i.e., not a Wal-Mart-run) charity? The idea is something good—keeping low-level, non-violent offenders out of the legal system and saving taxpayer dollars. But it does seem to fit the bill for extortion: Wal-Mart protecting the shoplifter from the government in exchange for money. I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds?

lurr 9y ago
> The idea is something good—keeping low-level, non-violent offenders out of the legal system by turning a corporation into the legal system. This is an awful idea.
menacingly 9y ago
Yeah. I'm sure, since humans in general were involved, it was not altruistically designed. However, Walmart's scale probably means that they're more interested in reducing the instance of shoplifting as a trend, rather than bilking some individual for an amount they've already wasted talking to them.
shkkmo 9y ago
> I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A non-profit first-offender education program funded by the police department and/or stores that doesn't require payment by participants would not be extortion and would have the same positive effects without the same incentives for abuse.
- dotancohen 9y ago
  Why was this insightful comment downvoted?
  - barsonme 9y ago
    You are aware what website you're on, right? ;)

bsder 9y ago

The fact that these programs even exist is a gigantic indictment of our justice system ...

menacingly 9y ago

My opinion hinges on how sleazy the conversations are in those rooms. On the surface, it's a cool idea to give shoplifters an option before you involve the police. You can't ensure that the sell is universally honest, so it's always going to have that risk. Then again, from my understanding it's not as if the police are either, so I guess any public conversation about innovative solutions to deal with common minor crime is good.

crispytx 9y ago

"violates state extortion laws." That's great. Hope they lock up those criminals in suits. Our country has a bad problem with letting guys in suits break the law as long as they do so while working for a corporation.

downandout 9y ago

This would likely be legal if they took a different approach. They can't say "pay us or we will report you to the police," because that is textbook extortion. However, that doesn't need to be said. Shoplifters know what the worst case is. They could simply say "you have the option to sign this civil agreement, which includes fees that you must pay and a non-disclosure agreement - we will not disclose the existence of this matter to anyone outside of Wal-Mart". Lawyers do this in civil negotiations all the time, with the implied threat of criminal prosecution without the actual threat. I also find it ironic and somewhat disturbing that prosecutors are mentioned throughout the article essentially saying that the State should have a monopoly on extortion because of the legal protections afforded to criminal defendants. Legal protections in the US are only as good as the lawyer you can afford to hire, and if you're shoplifting from Wal-Mart, the odds that you can afford a decent attorney are about zero. A cynical person might say that perhaps prosecutors are making such a big deal about this because a decrease in shoplifting calls will result in less work, overtime pay, etc. for police, jail/prison guards, probation officers, prosecutors, etc. They don't want to stop feeding the monster.

shkkmo 9y ago
>I also find it ironic and somewhat disturbing that prosecutors are mentioned throughout the article essentially saying that the State should have a monopoly on extortion because of the legal protections afforded to criminal defendants. What article are you reading? Only one current prosecutor is mentioned who states an opinion on the program, and he says: “The justice system should never be a profit system.” The second mentioned prosecutor doesn't have any quotes, but did sue Corrective Education for extortion and false imprisonment. The third mentioned (former) prosecutor is the founder of one of the companies. Your statement is pretty blatantly false. The one government official who does (explicitly) say that the State should have a monopoly on extortion is California Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn, who issued the injunction against Corrective Education.
- downandout 9y ago
  You're being pedantic, but you kind of made my point for me. As you point out in great detail, all of these prosecutors object to private companies doing what they do in the name of the State every single day (extort people). Some of them are acting on the objection by suing the program, others are quoted speaking out against it, etc.

ourmandave 9y ago

At a lot of big retailers try to make you sign a "confession" whether they call the police or not. Later you get a letter from a law firm demanding hundreds of dollars or they'll take you to small claims to recoup their cost for "investigative expenses". With the promise that the amount will go up if you don't settle. This is completely separate from any criminal charges and paying them doesn't effect any outcome of that at all. But if you don't know that you're likely to pay to get them to "drop the charges". http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay-security-costs-1.912834 http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay-secu...

gumby 9y ago

> officials questioned the legality of asking people for money under threat of criminal sanctions Thank goodness -- the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence. You can argue as to how effective that is (I believe it's commonly believed to be ineffective, though for reasons that are polar opposites depending on political views).

gumby 9y ago
Holy cow, -1 points. I'm not complaining, just amazed there are enough people who really think private sector criminal enforcement† is a good idea. No thanks, the word for that is "vigilanteism". I am concerned that there is a privatized legal system and glad that at least Wal Mart has stopped. †(private sector civil resolution --arbitration -- is often a good idea when there is not a huge power imbalance)

justboxing 9y ago

> Shoplifting suspects at stores that use Corrective Education are shown a video and given 72 hours to decide whether to enter the program. The video describes a six-to-eight-hour online course that promises to explain “why you make decisions that are harmful or illegal” and teach “life skills.” 6-to-8 gours sounds ridiculously long / excessive. "Life skills", really? I smell a scam here, some "educational company" partnered with them and sell them pay-per-participant exhorbitant fees for watching their "video course".

bahmboo 9y ago

1 - making companies pay for their own property security. good. 2 - having those programs pay for themselves (so they aren't cut and put back on society). good. 3 - coercing people in a compromised state for profit. not good. 4 - Room for improvement. Yes.

holografix 9y ago

I wonder if there's someone in Walmart, an accountant of sorts, who sits down and runs a report on all the money they made from desperate people shoplifting stuff on a yearly basis. Prob the same person who looked at that 0.01% of revenue been squandered away by shoplifters and thought: What if we made that a source of revenue? Where would this perverse incentive lead? Using commonly stolen goods as lure, maybe in a spot of the store where there's a false sense of privacy then waiting for the perp at the outside and saying: "Surprise, pay us $300 for that $100 dollar thing you were going to stole or you go to jail!" Boggles the mind

drewmol 9y ago

I'm on the fence. It's always interesting when a victim has a say in wether a crime gets prosecuted, which often leads to a situation where said victim may use that power to encourage an outcome that is preferable to both them and the perpetrator than letting the justice system handle it in typical fashion. I'd prefer if home break-ins don't get handled in a "Pay me $x and watch this video or we'll be forced to prosecute" BC while that may be better for both parties, it's likely worse for the rest of society. Not sure how I feel about petty theft being handled this way.

bb88 9y ago
You have a good point on the home breakins. But I think it's the way Walmart is doing it that's the problem. Walmart should just get one choice, either a criminal charge or a civil agreement. They can't be allowed to threaten both.
- drewmol 9y ago
  Hmmm... I don't know how it should be handled, but trying to prevent Walmart from taking this couse of action seems like it would be difficult to enforce within the constrainst of our legal system. Maybe a blanket policy that if you attempt to blackmail/extort/coerse someone into participating in some arrangement of alternative justice (outside the legal system) by using the threat of prosecution, you lose your legal standing as a victim, and therefore your ability to enforce prosecution? Let's say I was raped, and then attempt to extort money from the rapist in leiu of filing charges, I certainly think I would lose some credibility as a victim, and it's unfair to society who deserves knowledge of the potential threat, at minimum. It's important to recognize that the law someone violates is a crime against society as a whole, not just a crime against the particular victim. In this situation, the law is against shoplifting in general (society as a whole can be the victim), not against shoplifting FROM Walmart, so we should be careful to not let Walmart deprive society of our ability to enforce the agreed upon consequences.