4 ms·

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting t

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher. If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare. The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts.

jmward01 4mo ago
I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- tshaddox 4mo ago
  I don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.
  - alpinisme 4mo ago
    Yes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.
- toast0 4mo ago
  They probably didn't independently come up with the idea to steal cables or catalytic converters either. It's all word of mouth. But if half your buddies get shot [1] or jailed when they steal cables for drugs, it probably doesn't seem like such a good idea. Same thing when your buddy finally fills their trailer full of cats and brings them to the scrap yard to find out they can't get anything from that anymore. Unfortunately, there's a lag, but afaik, cat thefts drop pretty reliably after they become economically useless... not all the way to zero, some people don't get the news very fast. [1] this is not an endorsement of lethal force to deter cable theft
hiddencost 4mo ago
There's another theory which says that if people have health care, food, shelter, education, and liberty, they won't commit crimes like this. Just a thought.
- jeffrallen 4mo ago
  It's not a theory. It's socialism and it works fine in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and a bunch of other places.
  - johanvts 4mo ago
    Im Danish, and I approve of the welfare state system, but we still have people cutting down EV charger cables etc here.
    - tadfisher 4mo ago
      The answer is, you still do socialism, and you also pay someone to go around busting scrap yards that buy obviously-stolen material. Just focusing on the demand-side dramatically reduced incidences of catalytic converter theft in the US. You still get the occasional attempt, but basically no scrap yard will take catalytic converters without a title to the vehicle with matching VIN, and most will want to see the vehicle. Yes, requiring paperwork to scrap wiring is bureaucracy manifest. But legitimate people just do not roll up to scrap yards with a van full of tangled 4/0. The big catalytic converter buyer was so brazen, he had a mobile app. Free markets for stolen scrap is just beyond tolerable at this point.
      - ithkuil 4mo ago
        Italy is no Denmark but you still require to register before selling you scrap copper. I think it's a reasonable response for a real problem and refusing to do this due to some idealistic free market principle appears to me to be a sign of fanaticism.
  - apelapan 4mo ago
    Scandinavian scrap metal thieves organize trucks and cranes to steal copper roofs from old churches and rip down railroad overhead lines all the time. Free healthcare and education, guaranteed housing and social safety nets make little difference. Some people will stop at nothing to get more, no matter how much they already have. (Applies to billionaires and paupers alike). I guess you could call it having an entrepreneurial spirit. No one steals car stereos anymore though, because you can't sell them to anyone. That mechanism could be put to more work. Heavy, EU-wide supervision and enforcement against scrap metal dealers would probably make a difference.
intended 4mo ago
Nope. The surest disincentive is knowing you will be caught, not the penalty. If you can get away with it, then what value the penalty?
- kelnos 4mo ago
  The data doesn't agree with you, as others in this subthread have noted with references.
  - intended 4mo ago
    I saw only one submission to a paper, would you be willing to share links to the other references you mention?
47282847 4mo ago
Criminal punishment research consistently shows that reality does not follow initial intuition here. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-111524-094646 https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse.” (“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”)
close04 4mo ago
That just leads either to disproportionate or cruel and unusual punishment (not every object has the inherent level of danger so your $200 property must be rigged to kill or severely injure on attempted theft), or to raising stakes where the criminal is willing to do much worse since the outcome could anyway be death or severely body harm. If getting shot for $1000 is on the table, might as well come with a gun and shoot first, and topple the whole tower while at it. When you punish a baggie of drugs with 20 years in prison or potentially getting shot dead in the street, drug dealers escalate to containers of drugs. Where are you going to escalate the punishment? For those who feel like they get nothing from society no punishment works effectively, they are already in a prison with no future.
swiftcoder 4mo ago
> In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher Humans are notoriously bad at evaluating probabilities. They'll buy lottery tickets at 1:300,000,000 odds, and are upset when an 85% shot in XCOM misses... The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo ago
  > The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk. Your terms are acceptable. In all seriousness, there are cultures in the middle east that do (or did) this sort of thing. Losing a hand for stealing, etc.
  - kelnos 4mo ago
    That's not a 100% probability of being harmed, though. That's only if you get caught. Most criminals believe they won't get caught.
    - cjbgkagh 4mo ago
      They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders.
      - swiftcoder 4mo ago
        > They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders. Since most current-day legal systems severely limit employment opportunities for former criminals, it's pretty hard to determine whether they would re-offend in a society that didn't inflict continual punishment in this way
        cjbgkagh 4mo ago
        It’s not that hard to know, since they’re often not caught on their first crime but on their Nth. They leave fingerprints that’ll link the crimes together, so we already have stats on how likely a person will reoffend even when they are not punished at all. Criminal behavior is strongly linked to IQ and like IQ is largely hereditary. It’s dumb people thinking they’ve figured out a trick to game the system. We have a labor glut which is the primary reason employment opportunities are so restricted for offenders, I think it’s unhealthy for society to keep importing so many people in these circumstances. I also think allowing so much violence in prisons, effectively pressuring people to join gangs, is extremely counterproductive.
kelnos 4mo ago
Economics is a bad place to look for a fix for social problems. Look at incentives, instead: housed, well-fed people with financial security and a feeling of purpose in life tend to commit fewer crimes, so let's fix wealth/income inequality, as well as our pathetic social safety net. Not saying that will fix everything. People still commit crimes, both rich and poor alike, because they want a shortcut to having more than they have. But eliminating desperation would certainly help.

jmward01 4mo ago

I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.

NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago
[flagged]
tshaddox 4mo ago
I don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.
- alpinisme 4mo ago
  Yes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.
toast0 4mo ago
They probably didn't independently come up with the idea to steal cables or catalytic converters either. It's all word of mouth. But if half your buddies get shot [1] or jailed when they steal cables for drugs, it probably doesn't seem like such a good idea. Same thing when your buddy finally fills their trailer full of cats and brings them to the scrap yard to find out they can't get anything from that anymore. Unfortunately, there's a lag, but afaik, cat thefts drop pretty reliably after they become economically useless... not all the way to zero, some people don't get the news very fast. [1] this is not an endorsement of lethal force to deter cable theft

hiddencost 4mo ago

There's another theory which says that if people have health care, food, shelter, education, and liberty, they won't commit crimes like this. Just a thought.

jeffrallen 4mo ago
It's not a theory. It's socialism and it works fine in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and a bunch of other places.
- johanvts 4mo ago
  Im Danish, and I approve of the welfare state system, but we still have people cutting down EV charger cables etc here.
  - tadfisher 4mo ago
    The answer is, you still do socialism, and you also pay someone to go around busting scrap yards that buy obviously-stolen material. Just focusing on the demand-side dramatically reduced incidences of catalytic converter theft in the US. You still get the occasional attempt, but basically no scrap yard will take catalytic converters without a title to the vehicle with matching VIN, and most will want to see the vehicle. Yes, requiring paperwork to scrap wiring is bureaucracy manifest. But legitimate people just do not roll up to scrap yards with a van full of tangled 4/0. The big catalytic converter buyer was so brazen, he had a mobile app. Free markets for stolen scrap is just beyond tolerable at this point.
    - ithkuil 4mo ago
      Italy is no Denmark but you still require to register before selling you scrap copper. I think it's a reasonable response for a real problem and refusing to do this due to some idealistic free market principle appears to me to be a sign of fanaticism.
- apelapan 4mo ago
  Scandinavian scrap metal thieves organize trucks and cranes to steal copper roofs from old churches and rip down railroad overhead lines all the time. Free healthcare and education, guaranteed housing and social safety nets make little difference. Some people will stop at nothing to get more, no matter how much they already have. (Applies to billionaires and paupers alike). I guess you could call it having an entrepreneurial spirit. No one steals car stereos anymore though, because you can't sell them to anyone. That mechanism could be put to more work. Heavy, EU-wide supervision and enforcement against scrap metal dealers would probably make a difference.

intended 4mo ago

Nope. The surest disincentive is knowing you will be caught, not the penalty. If you can get away with it, then what value the penalty?

kelnos 4mo ago
The data doesn't agree with you, as others in this subthread have noted with references.
- intended 4mo ago
  I saw only one submission to a paper, would you be willing to share links to the other references you mention?

47282847 4mo ago

Criminal punishment research consistently shows that reality does not follow initial intuition here. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-111524-094646 https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse.” (“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”)

close04 4mo ago

That just leads either to disproportionate or cruel and unusual punishment (not every object has the inherent level of danger so your $200 property must be rigged to kill or severely injure on attempted theft), or to raising stakes where the criminal is willing to do much worse since the outcome could anyway be death or severely body harm. If getting shot for $1000 is on the table, might as well come with a gun and shoot first, and topple the whole tower while at it. When you punish a baggie of drugs with 20 years in prison or potentially getting shot dead in the street, drug dealers escalate to containers of drugs. Where are you going to escalate the punishment? For those who feel like they get nothing from society no punishment works effectively, they are already in a prison with no future.

swiftcoder 4mo ago

> In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher Humans are notoriously bad at evaluating probabilities. They'll buy lottery tickets at 1:300,000,000 odds, and are upset when an 85% shot in XCOM misses... The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo ago
> The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk. Your terms are acceptable. In all seriousness, there are cultures in the middle east that do (or did) this sort of thing. Losing a hand for stealing, etc.
- kelnos 4mo ago
  That's not a 100% probability of being harmed, though. That's only if you get caught. Most criminals believe they won't get caught.
  - cjbgkagh 4mo ago
    They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders.
    - swiftcoder 4mo ago
      > They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders. Since most current-day legal systems severely limit employment opportunities for former criminals, it's pretty hard to determine whether they would re-offend in a society that didn't inflict continual punishment in this way
      - cjbgkagh 4mo ago
        It’s not that hard to know, since they’re often not caught on their first crime but on their Nth. They leave fingerprints that’ll link the crimes together, so we already have stats on how likely a person will reoffend even when they are not punished at all. Criminal behavior is strongly linked to IQ and like IQ is largely hereditary. It’s dumb people thinking they’ve figured out a trick to game the system. We have a labor glut which is the primary reason employment opportunities are so restricted for offenders, I think it’s unhealthy for society to keep importing so many people in these circumstances. I also think allowing so much violence in prisons, effectively pressuring people to join gangs, is extremely counterproductive.

kelnos 4mo ago

Economics is a bad place to look for a fix for social problems. Look at incentives, instead: housed, well-fed people with financial security and a feeling of purpose in life tend to commit fewer crimes, so let's fix wealth/income inequality, as well as our pathetic social safety net. Not saying that will fix everything. People still commit crimes, both rich and poor alike, because they want a shortcut to having more than they have. But eliminating desperation would certainly help.