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Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions
- 14 5y agoLet’s continue our wage disparity and see how that Plays out. We have rising homeless rates it can only get worst. If I am already homeless I may as well attempt to shoplift as jail is 3 hots and a cot as they say.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoWith a side of sodomy. Prison in America is unjustly violent. The only thing I agree with progressives is that, if there’s no room to jail someone humanely, they shouldn't be in jail. This to say, the homeless doesn’t want to go to jail for a warm meal. He knows his local DA isnt punishing crime.
- _trampeltier 5y agoUh who could have this seen comming?!? Thing like this start to happen, if the gap between rich and poor becomes bigger and bigger. The next logic step would be just hijack random people.
- ejb999 5y agoso because Jeff Bezo's is rich, I can steal?
- _trampeltier 5y agoNo because I'm so poor and nothing to loose. If I had something to loose I wouldn't do stupid things. My life in jail might even better than on the street.
- mulletbum 5y agoNo because a class structure only has rich and poor with less and less middle ground, stealing becomes necessity to some. Even if immoral.
- glogla 5y agoIs stealing from someone like Walmart, who post record profits every year, pay employees so little they are on food stamps, engage in union busting etc etc really immoral?
- edflsafoiewq 5y agoYes.
- glogla 5y agoSo Walmart profit is more important to you than people not starving?
- edflsafoiewq 5y agoWalmart's profits have no bearing on the fact that stealing is immoral.
- glogla 5y agoCalling your personal morality a fact seems bit over the top.
- sumthinprofound 5y agoWalmart has paid over $1.4 billion in wage theft settlements and fines.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoAnd that also is immoral. However, that does not make it moral to steal from them.
- sieabahlpark 5y ago
- 5y ago
- threatofrain 5y agoWhy don't they just eat minced pork?
- twofornone 5y agoThe vast majority of these people are not stealing out of desperation. This is just the intersection of shitty culture and insufficient enforcement. >They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just load up on stuff,” the Post quoted a store employee saying We've all seen the videos. When egregious behavior like this goes unpunished and is publicized, there's no shortage of unscrupulous thieves who will line up for an easy score. There is always a subset of the population which only follows laws out of fear of punishment.
- otikik 5y agoIt sounds like you are saying that your sources for this claim: > The vast majority of these people are not stealing out of desperation Is that “you have seen some videos”. From where I stand, that doesn’t look like a very strong base on which to build upon.
- switch007 5y agoHigh inflation? A pandemic disrupting millions of people's income? Rising inequality? Colour me surprised.
- buscoquadnary 5y agoThese people aren't shoplifting to get their needs and to propose such so am ignorance of the situation. There was a wonderful and detailed article a while back about a baby formula shoplifting ring in the south that shows how this works. The people who are doing the shoplifting are often drug addicts who are promised cash payments or more drugs if they will go and shoplift by a middle man who then stockpiles the good and resales them on line. This isn't Jean Valjean stealing bread this is organized crime seeking to illicitly source goods.
- glogla 5y agoThis sounds like exactly the kind of this someone who doesn't want to confront millions of their countrymen living in desperation would tell themselves. No idea if it's really true, but it is suspicious how there's always a good explanation that something that looks like terrible injustice actually isn't.
- buscoquadnary 5y agoTo quote the article > Now they're combating systematic looting by organized crime gangs — which are growing more aggressive and violent This is a well documented phenomena and js evidenced by what people are stealing. You don't show up to Nordstrom with a garbage bag if you are starving and hungry you do it if you are looking to score.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoWhat do they do with the vast majority of LV clothes that don't fit? The smash and grabber doesn't appear to stop by the changing room to try them on first. Perhaps they drop off the ill fitting clothes the next day with a note.
- 5y ago
- TedShiller 5y agoLet the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.
- oh_sigh 5y agoThat's literally the first sentence of the article.
- gpt5 5y agoWhich seems like a bad deal for everyone (the stores, the people in the neighborhood, and even the shoplifters).
- ameminator 5y agoThe community gets the shopping options it asks for, apparently (or not, according to the article).
- e4e78a06 5y agoAlready happening in SF as we speak. And the remaining stores have super jacked up prices to the point that it's cheaper to order delivery from a store in the suburbs, pay a tip for a driver, and pay them to do the shopping for you (Instacart) than it is to buy locally. It's clear that Prop 47 and the general mentality that property crimes don't matter and prosecuting them is racist has failed.
- notthemessiah 5y agoI'm sure shoplifting is to blame, and not the price of rent and lack of new construction.
- e4e78a06 5y agoThey're both problems that can be attacked independently. You can crack down hard on shoplifters and reselling rings but also build lots of new housing. Price of rent is a function of housing supply and demand. Rent control just pushes the costs to less visible things like security deposit, maintenance, etc.
- burner556 5y ago
- krapp 5y ago>Chop off a hand if convicted for theft. Actually enforce our laws. That's... not a law anywhere in the US that I'm aware of.
- maxwell 5y agoSounds like a Code of Hammurabi reference.
- gerikson 5y agoMake the Bronze Age Great Again.
- selimthegrim 5y agoIslamic Sharia.
- azth 5y ago
- selimthegrim 5y agoThe last person to tell me that also told me that my parents should be executed because they were Ahmedis.
- azth 5y agoStraw man fallacy.
- SllX 5y agoIt’s actually not an enforceable law anywhere in the US since that would be cruel and unusual punishment.
- csense 5y agoFor me, it's a systems design problem. How do you design a law enforcement system that (1) doesn't grind down poor and minorities the way the current system does, yet (2) still makes punishment for minor crimes like shoplifting sufficiently swift, sure, and severe to be an effective deterrent? Liberals tend to say "Let's focus on (1) and ignore (2)," while conservatives say "Let's focus on (2) and ignore (1)." Is it possible to create a system satisfies both concerns? Or is there some fundamental reason that we can never have both? Do we need to pick exactly one of {(1), (2)} and just accept that we'll be stuck with whatever we decide is the lesser of two evils?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lamontcg 5y agoGet people jobs, get them off drugs and give them something to hope for so that you don't have to use law enforcement as the solution?
- antisthenes 5y agoThis. The best deterrent to crime is giving the criminal something to lose in the case of being arrested. And no, taking away freedom isn't really much of a deterrent if all you have to your name is $100 and a few sets of clothing and some old furniture. I bet people with steady jobs and with secure housing commit crimes at a rate of 0.1x (or less) of those who don't.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWhat if they don't want jobs and don't want off drugs? Can we force them? We can throw all the money we want at this problem, but at the end of the day, the person has to be somewhat willing to get their life back together, or we are just waiting it. It is not like most of them didn't have housing/work before their addiction started. The "I got addicted to drugs because I lost my housing and job" isn't as common as the other way around. The reason the problem is so bad now is that really bad drugs that mess people up a lot are much easier to get these days. Many of those people are never coming back, even if you gave them food and shelter for life.
- tomlockwood 5y agoI'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.
- Bostonian 5y agoI don't want to incarcerate a first-time shoplifter, but a habitual thief deserves to spend some time in jail, and the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves.
- ahh 5y agoIf they spend time in jail after the first time, maybe they won't become a habitual thief.
- ryan93 5y agoIn fact its impossible to steal from a CVS while in jail.
- notthemessiah 5y agoNah, prison is where they learn how to get away with it next time from hardened criminals.
- Ekaros 5y agoI don't really believe on that theory. On other hand whole being marked felon thing is what really destroys the future. If you can't get a decent job, what options do you have left?
- tomlockwood 5y ago> the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves. It'd appear though that given probability, an American is more likely to be in jail than the citizen of any other country, but even with this high threat of jail, these crimes seem to be on the rise.
- louwrentius 5y agoCurrent events, especially in America, has created a situation where I think theft has become ethical to sustain oneself. They may let us eat cake, but we may opt to eat the rich instead. Maybe you don't trust the stories over on /r/antiwork or /r/workreform but I think if even 1% is true, America is rapidly spiralling into a direction where a society can't be sustained. For a large part of the USA population, young people have no hope of a beter future. They may even only have hope not to die and just to exist. A home, decent wages, maybe a family one day, are probably for ever out of reach. Unbelievable for the IT tech bro for sure, with 6-figure salaries abound. Maybe it will not be so bad after all, but I'm not so sure, to be frank.
- ryan93 5y agoWhy are people with low incomes and often drug habits moving to a city with exorbitant rent. With a couple roommates and a retail job you can easily afford rent in large parts of the country.
- louwrentius 5y agoSure blame the victim.
- ryan93 5y agoPeople have agency. Lol at thinking these people have exhausted literally every avenue of advancement
- buscoquadnary 5y agoThere was a lovely article yesterday about the fall of Rome dealing with how one of the reasons Rome fell is because various people acted in their own self interest at the expense of the public good. Many of them doing so because they couldn't believe that something that'd been around so long could fail. To condone theft because you feel like it is the best option for you is the epitome of that mindset. It will destroy society because we destroy the incentive for anyone to create to produce and then we see real poverty. Everyone bitching on antiwork about their hopeless future are doing so from a place where they have regular stable electricity, running clean water, an internet connection, and I am going to guess ate sometime in the last 12 or at least 24 hours. Contrast that with my brother in law from Africa when we was growing up the government was subject to constant rebellions, and anything you had could be taken at any time, it made it hard to build and secure goods and services because much of your time was trying to survive, and any appearance of success brought those that would take it from you. That's where we are headed if we continue to ignore the fact that justice and laws are the price of civilized society regardless of how inhumane it feels.
- WalterGR 5y agoSome companies are lying about why they’re closing stores. For example, Walgreens announced in 2019 that it would shutter 200 stores. Blaming shoplifting sounds like some serious Chamber of Commerce spin to direct attention away from them abandoning locations and the jobs that go with them, and to give ammunition to pro-corporate pro-policing factions.
- phendrenad2 5y agoSo what is the real reason they're closing the stores? I want to hear the rest of the conspiracy theory :(
- WalterGR 5y agoThe word of big business is truth and doubting it is a conspiracy theory? That’s a bit of a leap. Anyway, TFA links to more reading in its final paragraph. Look for the link in the following text: but: An analysis of crime statistics and other reporting by The Atlantic cast doubt on what it called the "great shoplifting freak-out," citing "fuzzy data" and asserting that what's being lumped together as shoplifting is actually a variety of violent crimes.
- phendrenad2 5y agoThat doesn't answer my question, but... that article you tell me to read merely says that there isn't enough information to say that there's a theft spike, it does not provide any evidence against a theft spike.
- WalterGR 5y agoThose can be equivalent.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoNot really. If stores aren't reporting their theft problems because police aren't doing anything about them...the theft problem remains even if the crime statistics magically don't show it. Everyone quickly realizes it is a farce and even the most left-wing SF politician stops using the statistics in their arguments.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y agoLately there are a lot of people who want to sell this story of out-of-control shoplifting, but as the article itself notes at the end, it might be bullshit: > Yes, but: An analysis of crime statistics and other reporting by The Atlantic [1] cast doubt on what it called the "great shoplifting freak-out," citing "fuzzy data" and asserting that what's being lumped together as shoplifting is actually a variety of violent crimes. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifting-holiday-theft-panic/621108/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifti...
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoIf you've seen the problem first hand, you wouldn't dismiss it as BS, but I get how people who live in more comfortable environs would find it hard to believe. If you ever visit the Target in downtown Seattle, you can see people just grabbing things off the shelf, the associates watch, follow, try to dissuade them, but 5/10 they get out the door with what they've stolen. It is very depressing to actually see it happen. The LEGO shelf in that store was cleared out long ago, much to my son's sadness. But I wouldn't really call this "shoplifting" like I knew it as a kid (when my friends would do it on a stupid dare, trying not to get caught). These people...they aren't worried about getting caught, they aren't subtle about it, they just know the system isn't going to punish them so why not? Like who the heck would try to shoplift a 70 inch TV and think they could do that without anyone noticing? And the judge let him go even though he had like 5 bench warrants: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10447987/Prolific-shoplifter-steals-70inch-TV-22nd-Target-theft-released-judge.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10447987/Prolific-s...
- micromacrofoot 5y agoThey’ll shift to online only and then won’t care anymore because the pain will shift back to consumers. Also note that shoplifting is all over the news, but wage theft is still rampant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/want-to-be-a-criminal-in-america-stealing-billions-is-your-best-bet-to-go-scot-free https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/07/want-t...
- andreskytt 5y agoIsn’t it because a lot of people no longer consider stealing morally wrong? There’s an outside voice saying “you deserve this, they’ve got insurance, it’s ok” and the inner voice no longer reponds with “that’s not ok”. Might that be the consequence of too much focus on all sorts of external moral factors telling us what is and is not offensive, perimissible?