There's probably some of this, but I think it's driven by district attorney not prosecuting people. We see people that have 20+ prior arrests. How many times can a cop arrest the same person and do the paperwork if he's not going to be prosecuted? I don't think people are pushing police to arrest more people.
> Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, while others are driven by addiction or mental illness; the police did not identify the 327 people in the analysis.
Not clear if that's only in 1 year, but 6,000 arrests for the same 327 people means 18 arrests per person on average. Maybe if you see the same person shoplifting more than 5 times you put him away for some real time. 10 times? Hell even 20 strikes and you're out would make a real dent and serve as a deterrent.
I have to deal with the same kind of bugs all day long, doesn't mean I get to refuse to do my job for years at a time until someone I like is voted into office.
> There's probably some of this, but I think it's driven by district attorney not prosecuting people. We see people that have 20+ prior arrests. How many times can a cop arrest the same person and do the paperwork if he's not going to be prosecuted?
There’s plenty of desire to increase prosecution rates in American jurisdictions but little desire to raise taxes high enough to pay for lawyers, judges, courthouses, and humane incarceration—let alone assistance for the otherwise innocent families of criminals. The victims of petty crime are usually poor or middle-class and therefore lack the political power to meaningfully change policy.
> victims of petty crime are usually poor or middle-class and therefore lack the political power to meaningfully change policy
This is just not true. Most of this is organized exploiting a lenient justice system. From my original NYT article:
> Last year, 41 people were indicted in New York City in connection with a theft ring that state prosecutors said shoplifted millions of dollars worth of beauty products and luxury goods that were sold online.
The idea that these 300 people are just stealing bread to feed their families is a myth.
The idea that organized retail theft is significant or "most" is a myth[1]
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/retail-theft-in-us-cities...
Ah as long as Brookings Institute tells me it's a myth, I'll ignore the people selling basic toiletries right outside of drug stores, or bike messengers riding with suspicious taped up bikes that are poorly suited for heavy city use, or the videos of people coming in as a group, loading the bags and making off in get-away cars. Ignore what's in front of you, or the fact that nearly a third of shoplifting can be tracked down to ~300 people. These people maybe just have really big families to feed!
But you might ask why are stores closing? Why is deodorant behind lock and key?
> Finally, corporate claims are not holding up to scrutiny, and are being used to close stores that are essential assets for many communities.
Ah yes, evil corporations like to close stores and forgo profit for ... reasons.
Don't believe what's right in front of your eyes.
Nothing to see.
The Brookings institute is hardly a lefty rag - they're about as centrist/neoliberal capitalist as an institution comes.
> Ignore what's in front of you
Yes, the general advice is to look past specific notable anecdotes and try to identify actual data to validate whether your emotional experience of the world is reflective of the world or of you. In this case, the numbers suggest the problem is not the world, no matter how many videos you're seeing on TikTok or wherever.
A real problem for assessing truth in the modern world is that anything that happens anywhere is instantly available to you as a decontextualized short-form video, and it's your job as a responsible media consumer to understand that ten videos on your feed are not a trend outside your feed.
> Ah yes, evil corporations like to close stores and forgo profit for ... reasons.
No, they're not forgoing profits, they're choosing to close stores with lower levels of profits than they'd prefer and using retail theft as an excuse. It wouldn't be the first time and it sure won't be the last time that a business tries to deflect blame for its poor planning onto the rest of us.
Where does that ~300 people figure come from??
I think you misread? That sentence isn’t describing the criminals, it’s describing the victims.
Wealthy people (mostly) didn’t own the Kias and Hyundais that were stolen en masse during the early 2020’s for instance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Challenge
Targeting a wealthy person for property crime is a high-risk, high-reward scenario, but there is still the risk of enforcement. A poor person is a much softer target and law enforcement will almost certainly tell them there’s no hope of being made whole.
Yeah, I always wonder why we can't have an "n strikes and you get the electric chair" type of law, where n can be decided. Clearly at that point that person is better off not alive.
That’s a hell of a take for shoplifting.
Yeah I definitely want the person who costs Wal-mart a couple thousand bucks to face execution. great idea.
It's not that walmart lost something, it's that it's a general menace to others, and if you do it once fine but if you do it 10 times you're out. Get them to leave the country, if execution is not your thing.
Welcome to the reality of the Black Lives Matters protests.
They got what they wanted--fewer Blacks shot by the police. But that's because the police weren't being as aggressive in doing their job. Crime rates went up, the number of Blacks killed went up--fewer by cops being offset by more from other criminals.
And we see the result of bail reform. The old system was not good--for lesser offenses they were typically sentenced to time served. This amounts to skipping over the determining guilt part of "justice". But when they took action on that they didn't notice that that was what was actually keeping them off the streets. The justice system simply does not have remotely the capacity to actually prosecute as many crimes as they catch.