This is mostly bullshit. Crime rates in California and SF are comparable to the rest of the country. However there seems to be a concerted effort to push back on any reductions in moronic "tough on crime" policies from the 80s and 90s. Thefts under $1k should be a misdemeanor. How the hell were they ever a felony? In Canada theft under $5k is punishable by a maximum of 2 years in jail (with most people getting a lot less) and retailers seem to be doing ok.
If people have learnt not to report crimes (because it makes no difference), the police have learnt to not arrest people for non-violent crimes (because the DA won't prosecute), do you think that might affect the crime rates? If so, in which direction?
> If people have learnt not to report crimes (because it makes no difference)
I call bullshit on people saying there's widespread crime not being reported. If your car window got smashed if you are either:
- A Lyft or Uber driver
- Your car was a rental
- You have a lease on your car
- Have "premium" or expensive home or car insurance
you get actual money from filing a police report from your insurance provider.
If your gadgets get stolen in the street a lot of credit cards or stuff like Apple care, and also some home insurance, will cover part of getting a replacement. But you also have to file a police report.
I really doubt most people are "learning to not report crime" when they literally can get payed for it.
Insurance won't always ask you for a police report. They're not going to chase someone down for a $150 window. If you break your own window on accident, I don't think they care much about the difference.
Target has started closing their San Francisco stores at 6pm as a response to the increase in theft. Do you really think that this wasn't a data-driven decision, and that Target as a whole just got swept up in some kind of racist moral panic?
IMO it doesn't matter if your theft is a felony or misdemeanor, police should still patrol and try to pursue it. Cops, however, claim they are overworked and understaffed to do this.
This is the "broken windows" theory- if you let minor crimes like shoplifting go unpunished in a city, more people will do it.
A relatively-new (built in the last two years) Taco Bell near me has a sign up saying that they are only open 4PM-10PM, drive-thru only. Something weird is going on with employment. It's as if some of these big firms will suffer some huge penalty the moment their average wages go over a certain threshold.
The drive-thru only restriction is almost certainly because of COVID.
... But the hours restriction is interesting. I've noticed weird hours at the Taco Bell near my place, and this is probably purely anecdotal, but it does make me sort of wonder if there's something unique to Taco Bell making it hard for them to flesh out their hours.
If the Canadian maximum is 2years, then that i would be a felony by US standards.
Canadian law also has subtle differences such as hybrid offenses whereby prosecutors can decide whether to charge as a felony or misdemeanor, for exactly the same crime/facts. Such a concept would be entirely unconstitutional under US law. So direct comparisons between the countries re possible punishments are complicated.
I dunno... the people at our SF office talk about car break-ins happening roughly yearly and when I visit SF I see signs disclaiming responsibility for theft everywhere.
The purpose of grading is to provide an appropriate punishment. I'm my state, the grading for retail theft starts low, but depends on the value of the item. After a few times it becomes a felony for anything, such as a man who was in the news as getting a felony for stealing a candy bar. If it's always going to be a felony with potential prison time, then people might think "why not steal that riding lawn mower if the punishment is the same as a candy bar". Same risk, might as well increase the reward.
Theft seems pretty clear. Either you pay for something, or you don't. If you don't, you know you didn't.
I don't see how "light theft" is something we should tolerate.
If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft. But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools.
(And, this isn't just me expressing personal moral preferences. Theft is a tax on everyone who does pay for goods, via price increases)
"Either you pay for something, or you don't. If you don't, you know you didn't."
That's not exactly true. There can be items that are confusing, such as whether or not a bin or bucket comes with a lid. With the advent of self checkouts, it's also possible that someone rings up an item incorrectly just by accident, especially with non bar codes items. People could be prosecuted for this depending on the state's requirements. The burden of proof can be quiet low.
"But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools."
Here you are using $500 as an example. Do you feel the same if someone takes an extra 10 cent washer?
"If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft."
I don't think food theft should be an exception - just the same as the current grading tier. There are many programs and food banks that people can use to get food.
What are your thoughts on other crimes with different gradings? Should assault always be a felony? Should speeding always be considered reckless endangerment?
Again, the grading is supposed to provide an appropriate punishment based on the severity of the crime.
If a store prosecutes their customers for stealing a $0.10 washer, they won't have customers for long.
My personal opinion is that the severity of consequence should be relative to the people the crime affects.
Theft (retail, insurance, etc) exists in this weird limbo where the primary victim (the business) isn't the customer. However, it's ultimately the customer who pays.
So light-touching theft prosecution is effectively not caring about taxing customers. Most of whom don't even know they're being taxed.
Yeah, most stores have limits and try to resolve any possible misunderstandings. Walmart prosecutes starting at $20.
Maybe your state is different, but I wouldn't call it light touching in my state. First offense, is a summary offense if the merchandise was under $150. That's a fine, restitution, and up to 90 days in jail. So possibly a light touch if there's no jail time, but generally going to jail means losing your job and such for lack of attendance. Higher amounts or subsequent offenses constitute misdemeanors (up to 3 years in prison), or felonies (up to 5 years in prison. Even without prison terms, people can lose their job, be denied jobs, lose their rights, etc from these higher level penalties. Which I think is fine when there's this step grading for value and repeat offenses (still some outliers like a man getting a felony for a candy bar, although it seemed like he probably had a mental issue that was causing these low dollar thefts, so probably needs to have some exception to get these people treatment). I believe this serves the purpose of preventing and rehabilitating low level offenders so that they don't become larger offenders in the future, and if they do then they get higher penalties.
If we're talking about the USA, it depends on the color of the kid's skin. White juveniles are sent home with a stern verbal admonishment, black juveniles are sent to prison at the first opportunity.
>In 1995, African American youths made up 12% of the population, but were arrested at rates double those for Caucasian youths. The trend towards adult adjudication has had implications for the racial make-up of the juvenile prison population as well. Minority youth tried in adult courts are much more likely to be sentenced to serve prison time than white youth offenders arrested for similar crimes.
>According to the Equal Justice Initiative, Black children are more than twice as likely as white kids to be arrested, even though they’re not committing more crimes, but because Black Kids are burdened by a “presumption of guilt and dangerousness,” which leads youth of color to have higher rates of stops, searches, violence, suspension, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile justice system.
>As of 2013, black juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed as white juveniles, Americans Indian juveniles were more than three times as likely, and Hispanic juveniles were 61 percent more likely.
>However, research has documented the existence of racial disparity in the treatment of youth involved in the juvenile justice system for several decades. Studies from the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated that black juveniles were detained and confined at higher rates compared with white youth, and that black youth were more likely to be sent to correctional facilities compared with white youth, who were more likely to be sent to psychiatric hospitals. Additionally, recent studies have documented the continued trend of overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system
Proof of higher incarceration is not proof of unequal application of law. Additionally, sentencing takes into account past actions of the individual.
Did they commit more crimes?
Additionally if the whole racial bias theory is true (i don't agree that it is) then why should be incarcerating blacks less? I think the appropriate response would be to incarcerate white people more often.
I'm not seeing the data, please link it. All I see are some quotes referring to a Mother Jones article and a lot of assumptions.
You need data showing white kids are stopped for crime and released to prove this, not just some random left leaning organizations that says it's true.
>What makes "stealing less than $1k" more acceptable?
The cost to the victim. Someone grabs a few unsecured tie downs off a truck at a truck stop that's a hundred bucks. Someone scraps some spools of copper stolen from a job site and it could be thousands.
I think having a step function where you define all theft below a dollar amount as one type and then above as a different type is just legacy code from back in the day when it wasn't reasonable for the legislature to just say "the fine will be X-times the replacement cost of the goods or an equivalent jail time as determined by table Y in appendix Z" and expect the courts to be able to enforce it in an efficient enough manner.
The fact that we we have basically two classes of crime that include both violent and nonviolent crime results in a lot of overlap where you can have some pretty bad misdemeanors and some pretty mild felonies all depending on legal technicalities.
Don't forget summary offenses. Some of them can carry jail time. In PA you can get 90 days in jail for having a dog get loose from your yard. Additionally, a second offense within one year becomes a misdemeanor.
This is NOT bullshit. Do you live in SF? I live right next to the CVS/Walgreens that are targeted in Soma and I can guarantee you you'll see someone robbing them blind if you stay in there for about 1 hour in there.
I go in there to buy something small once in a while and 1 out of 4 times I see some guy just grabbing and walking out while the security watches him steal right before their eyes.
> Crime rates in California and SF are comparable to the rest of the country.
I don't know who's in the wrong here, but if the comment you're replying to was correct and DA wouldn't persecute these cases, wouldn't it also mean that they wouldn't appear in statistics you're quoting as well?
The irony.... The agenda seems to be it's ok to steal, commit crime if you're a specific skin color.
You're right there is an agenda being pushed. I can't believe people can be so brainwashed that they'll defend crime. I guess you reap what you sow though, just don't push your moronic "acceptance" on the rest of the country. And please for the love of god stay where you are and don't infest other parts of the US with your ridiculousness.
If you want to live in a place that supports this by all means do it but don't make the rest of us do it.
It shouldn't, nor should it lead to long custodial sentences.
> The agenda seems to be it's ok to steal, commit crime if you're a specific skin color.
Wow. Wasn't even going to go there, but if you are going to let your racist flag fly I guess we can just let you run with it. The rest of us will continue to explore radical ideas like attacking the causes of criminal behavior rather than just criminalizing poverty and when necessary treating offenders with rehabilitation rather than the sort of simple-minded retribution that you seem to favour.
Ok well since you're playing the race baiting game can I assume that you're fine with the criminal activity leading to small sentences on Jan 6th?
Why don't you tell us how allowing more criminal activity and giving people less harsh sentences is going to fix minority communities? Does it work along the same lines as throwing them free money?
>Wasn't even going to go there, but if you are going to let your racist
But you did and you did so because you have a lame rebuttal no good logical argument to defend your bs. When you label everyone who upsets you racist it starts to make the word meaningless so good job on that front. "Look another racist! See... no one cares"
That all sounds great, but you’d better be sure about the “causes of criminal behavior.” Not everyone agrees on that, and as such, you might be unpleasantly surprised at what ultimately gets “attacked.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/bogus-bac...
Edit: The media seems to be in a real crime frenzy right now. Exhibit A is this bullshit graph that swaps the x axis to make it look like crime is rising: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/cnn-chart-crime