From someone who has extensive experience in the criminal justice system, I wonder how much of this is because they have no evidence of theft by the persons the

From someone who has extensive experience in the criminal justice system, I wonder how much of this is because they have no evidence of theft by the persons they arrest? It's one thing to arrest someone who is clearly on your property* and the officer can testify they found Person X where they shouldn't be, but unless the officer sees X pulling a package out of a railcar and can specifically identify them, it gets tricky to find them guilty of the larger crime at trial. Almost certainly though, multiple misdemeanour convictions for trespassing are eventually going to elevate to a felony. It is possibly still worth it though. Having been locked up I know many people who would commit what most people would consider petty robberies and just suck up the months and years of being locked up. People become inured to incarceration. The first time you're locked up you're scared and you don't know what's going on. The second time: you walk in like a boss and all your friends are already there. A lot of the people doing this have been programmed by their peers to see regular jobs as something suckers do, and that crime is the "cool" way to make money. Most of them are not doing it because jobs are unavailable, just that they don't want a job. A lot of them would work for themselves though if they could find the right industry and were given appropriate help to see it through and stay on the correct path. * trespass isn't always a crime the first time you are caught somewhere you should not be - often it requires the property owner to tell you that you are not welcome to return before the statute activates