There are a lot of crimes that have no direct victim or 'offender' at all - drugs, prostitution, etc. And these crimes are actively prosecuted. I'd fully agree

There are a lot of crimes that have no direct victim or 'offender' at all - drugs, prostitution, etc. And these crimes are actively prosecuted. I'd fully agree with you in cases like this that the enforcement is a complete waste of time, effort, and money. But in this case stealing stuff from somebody is a crime that very much has a victim and an offender. Crimes against property are second only to crimes against people. I think these should always be very actively prosecuted. Beyond that the video also shows a second reason why these crimes need to be actively prosecuted. The creator and his friend trialed their trap packages for what couldn't have been all that long. Yet in that time period they caught around a half dozen thieves, probably around a dozen once you include accomplices. When crimes aren't prosecuted and you have the sort of people that would take advantage of this, you're incentivizing crime. A third issue is that without enforcement you start to encourage vigilante justice, which can be disproportionate and extremely dangerous. In this case the retribution was good spirited and presumably aimed at embarrassing the police into action and getting some social media love. But you could just as well have somebody who created dangerous packages, or an armed individual seeking to engage in confrontation with the thieves. --- And as an aside, with criminal theft it doesn't matter if the item is returned after stolen. A big difference between criminal offenses (including misdemeanors) and civil offenses is that the latter is generally about making material loss right again. The former seeks to right the material loss, but the punishment also includes purely punitive measures. Break a contract to the tune of $100 and you're generally on the line for $100 and some court costs. Steal the same amount and you're facing e.g. 6 months in jail and a $1000 fine.