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Comment by junaru | Hacker News Reader

The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting. When it comes to trusting anyone about an outcome of policy one chooses to listen either to the people who deal with it on a daily basis or people who want to make careers from it. This article is clearly written by the later, it even mentions the changes in practices but quickly dismisses them as not fitting the narrative. The best way to reduce crime is to change its definition.

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> "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life"

The situation in the article does not describe anyone convicted of a crime.

They are posting bail so they can get out of jail while they await trial or whatever the next steps are.

The process of someone being arrested, not able to post bail, losing what job they might have, and other consequences simply for a petty arrest are well documented as are the incredible costs to society as a whole (way beyond the cost of bail).

As for "careers", that's a very strange way to describe how crime comes about.

> The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting.

I don't see any such overall shift occurring. What I do see is a positive evolution that deprioritizes victimless crimes such as doing drugs which preserves our resources so they can be focused on crimes with victims.

>I don't see any such overall shift occurring. What I do see is a positive evolution that deprioritizes victimless crimes such as doing drugs which preserves our resources so they can be focused on crimes with victims.

I agree with regard to public opinion but the people who set policy keep trying to sneak policies that decriminalize petty crime with a victim into policies that are portrayed as reducing victimless crime.

Anecdotal example:

A local to me DA with political ambitions released a list (not sure if it was a proposed list or final list) of crimes he wasn't gonna prosecute. The list was mostly sensible but it included things like "theft under $250" which is insane because without the risk of prosecution the ROI on petty theft becomes positive and you are basically encouraging it. Predictably, there was widespread backlash against this (proposed?) policy. I think this kind of thing is what the GP is talking about.

Probably because "theft under $250" shouldn't be a jailable offense but an infraction or low-level misdemeanor involving a fine and community service. Putting someone in jail over $250 or less isn't good for society - cost or morality wise.

I agree, but this wasn't a "I'm gonna ask the judge to sentence people reasonably" list. It was an "I will not prosecute" list.

Sure, but the DA doesn't prosecute infractions so the law the DA is talking about must have the crime be something prosecutable, when it could just be something punishable.

We can probably agree it doesn’t make sense to go through the cost and effort to prosecute someone who stole $0.01. And it does make sense to prosecute someone who stole $1,000,000. So there is some threshold number on the border between “makes sense” and “doesn’t make sense”. What is that number and how do you calculate it?

I reject this framing. There is more to life than dollar value. Petty thiefs destroy social trust and cohesion, and this destroyed trust has bigger value than the value of items they stole.

Additionally, remember that the goal of prosecution and punishment is to deter crime, and so you should not only consider the cost of prosecution vs the cost of stolen item, but also the cost of all the crimes you enable when the thieves learn there is no punishment for petty crime.

> Petty thiefs destroy social trust and cohesion, and this destroyed trust has bigger value than the value of items they stole.

This is a very good point.

I’m not sure but it sounds like you’re arguing that the non-monetary cost to society of petty theft in general justifies prosecution of any amount stolen. This seems like a much more extreme view than I was even arguing against. I believe the threat to “social trust and cohesion” is at least directly proportional to the monetary amount stolen and therefore there is still a lower bound to what makes sense to go after. I don’t know how you’d calculate that bound though given the non-monetary cost is hard to quantify.

It is immature to attribute financial cost to everything. What you say is social trust and cohesion is what accountants call goodwill, the value above the net worth of a corporation or something operating that is uncountable.

Prioritizing social trust and cohesion through omitting or ignoring by misdeeds of institutions or individuals that are too big to fail seems like extra effort to achieve nothing. It isn't real trust and cohesion, it is deception and coercion.

I’m not sure I understand what you are saying, but I stand by my assertion that it is a waste of the state’s limited time and budget to prosecute someone over stealing a penny. I’m honestly surprised that this seems to be a massively unpopular opinion here.

Yes, I think it does justify that. I think we should prosecute every case of theft, unless the victim explicitly asks that we don't. Of course, the punishment should be proportional to the crime (so that e.g. first time shoplifting offender could get 1 day of jail time), but we must prosecute every case if reasonable, most certainly if we know who the perp is, and have solid evidence of the crime, and we must escalate the punishment for repeat offenders.

If you don't do that, you get ridiculousness like this: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/steal...

Yes, and then you get stories like this one https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/steal... because the petty thiefs are empowered by the no jail policy.

If people stealing packages were reliably subject to fines exceeding the value of the packages, they'd stop stealing pretty quick, and it would be cheaper for society than putting them in jail.

If you read the article, it will be clear to you that the package thief described in the article is not going to pay any fine, ever. She doesn't pay rent, and doesn't make any money other than through theft. She doesn't even show up for court summons, which results in police forcibly arresting you and bringing you to court. How do you expect person like that to pay any fine?

Fines work to deter crime of people who have something to lose, but those who have nothing, and live off crime, don't care about the fines.

Then she should be charged with a different crime (failure to appear in court, aggravated petty larceny or whatever you want to call it) not for stealing $250 or less.

I think that for smaller crimes it would be good to randomly prosecute, say, 5% of all instances of that crime (assuming a truly random choice is made). This stops career thieves from getting away with things forever but reduces the burden on society to prosecute every instance.

Humans don't live in a vacuum. I don't believe "victimless crimes" exist. There is always a victim even if it is yourself.

> There is always a victim even if it is yourself.

That's simply nonsense, and incredibly authoritarian.

In any free society the state simply shouldn't be probing into the private lives and bodies of citizens. If an adult makes the informed decision to do something to their own body, they are not a victim. Thinking otherwise strips people of their agency.

Although I agree with what you're saying, the philosophy isn't so clear cut; even some strands of libertarian thought recognize harms against oneself, but the "oneself" is in the future, and could be considered a separate person. By an extension of the harm principle, it could be permissible to illegalize things which cause harm against people in future - the sale of cigarettes, for example.

I'm okay with that if we take out public healthcare, handouts, etc. If you want to be an outcast, go ahead, but deal with the consequences.

By your logic the government should be banning sugar, forcing people to exercise, and on and on. Using the welfare state as an excuse for the government to control the private lives of citizens is pernicious to individual liberty at best, and totalitarian at worst. A safety nets don't exist to allow for the state to be an ever watchful and scolding parent, but rather to provide a floor so that people don't fall in to miserable situations.

Furthermore, the idea that one's actions in private, concerning only their own body, should make them a social outcast is laughably puritanical. Inclusion in society is about how one engages in the public sphere.

If the victim is yourself, either you were coerced (and the coercion should be the crime) or you consented (and it shouldn't be a crime). If I kick myself in the shin, is that battery, now?

Many drug crimes, like dealing and driving while intoxicated, do have victims.

Parent said doing drugs, not dealing or driving while doing. Both dealing (in the victim-ful sense of black and gray market dealing) and driving while intoxicated are still heavily prosecute, no one is easily forgiving those

Most people doing drugs are driving with them as well. Addicts aren’t going to stop just because they need to drive to the store.

Not all drug users are addicts but addicts, especially functioning ones, are doing the day to day stuff everyone else does.

Doesn’t matter if we like it or not scientists are trying to develop a THC test for driving in legal states. It’s going suck for a lot of people until they get it right.

FYI, I believe in a form of decriminalization for drug use. I call it carrot or stick.

The same could be said of alcohol, but I doubt most people who are drinking are also driving while under the influence.

There’s a test and a legal limit for alcohol. At the moment for drugs, even prescribed ones, any amount is enough for a DUI. In my state, I can legally have 3 beers in an hour and drive but couldn’t have one hit of a joint and legally drive.

I don’t avoid driving drunk because it can be tested for. I avoid it because it’s dangerous.

It’s absurd to think that most people who do other types of drugs are willing to drive while intoxicated while they aren’t while drunk.

I didn’t say what you alluded to in your last paragraph. Legally people can and do drink and drive, it’s illegal to consume drugs and drive in any amount (in my state).

My personal experiences in high school and college lead me to believe a lot of people think it’s ok to smoke and drive and to some extent do other things. While they will avoid drunk driving just because it’s much easier to detect alcohol.

The last thing you should do is listen to people who "deal with [crime] on a daily basis". They have no exposure to the overall extent of the problem, and are instead exposed to a hyper-concentrated dose of the worst criminals, often by the very nature of the job. Your society could be experiencing an immense and historically unprecedented reduction in crime, and yet the people who deal with criminals as their full-time job will (from their perspective) still see the world as a hive of scum and villainy.

The problem is that so many crimes are stupid. How many people have been arrested for marijuana, and now the most recent polls say only 8% of Americans think it should be illegal. When the government makes generally-acceptable activities into a crime, naturally terms like “criminal” start to have a weakened negative connotation.

>The best way to reduce crime is to change its definition.

Problem is, that's also the best way to increase crime when your budget depends on it.

Does NJ still do civil asset forfeiture? That's another weird thing about US policing for my German mindset, and as opposed to cash bails it doesn't even have a cool Lee Majors TV series attached to it.

I do remember that the municipial nature of PDs was also a bit troublesome to me.

What about municipal PDs is troublesome to you?

No training standards, not larger-scale oversight, a lot of "we have always done it like this here", a lot of "I know the DA and the judge because we go to the same BBQs", incentives to contribute to the (very local and therefore very noticeable) general fund through fines and civil forfeiture, the list goes on. Basically a police that is the strongest gang in town rather than a professional and slightly anonymous representation of the law. Which in the end makes it less likely that the law applies the same to all, irrespective of the person.

Mostly the local oversight of the local force. The overly cozy arrangement just invites corruption.

It would be nice if we could "trust" some group about the social impact of policy changes, but people have a terrible track record at that. Running an experiment is the ideal, and not always possible, but here's an experiment and you're choosing to discard the results.

It's not as if this is the only data point. There are both countries that never had bail, and ones that similarly curtailed it. No disaster is apparent in either case.

I'm sorry you don't believe in "innocent until proven guilty".

>The best way to reduce crime is to change its definition.

Perhaps that's the fastest way, but prevention is the best way. The issue is (as always) differing opinions on how to prevent it.

>The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting.

Depends on the crime, doesn't it? Like most things, it's a spectrum. I would agree with you on murder, rape, arson, etc. Not so much on most drug charges. Political posturing has made drug charges, which were typically petty crimes, into felonies. You would be amazed at what are felonies today.

> The general move towards "crime is no big deal" and "should not impact you later in life" is quite disgusting.

I have not noticed any such general move.

My next door neighbor works for our sheriff's department, and I hear a constant stream of incredible stories detailing horrific crimes committed by people out on bail or who were let out of sentences ridiculously early.

Unfortunately, there are enough of those stories to keep the pipeline full. However, selection bias is the problem. Your neighbor probably doesn't realize or even encounter the (most likely) far more numerous cases of "person out on bail / released early goes back to normal life and things are fine."

Same reason I don't watch prime time news unless I know a particular story will be covered (hapy local event things, basically). Sensational sells, happy normal everyday life far outnumbers all those stories but who watches the nightly news to hear "man woke up, went to get his newspaper, and saw the first bloom of the year - much happier today"?

Point of order: If I was going to tell someone a story, I'd probably tell the dramatic one ("guy out on bail murders bus of kittens by driving it into a cancer ward") vs boring ones "a man out on bail went to court and was found not guilty".

Data points are much more interesting when talking about how to create functional systems and allocate resources than some emotional tale. If my town spent millions of dollars buffing up their homicide department when we only see common assaults in 99.999% of the time, I'd be pissed as a taxpayer.

These stories stick in the mind. You won't hear the stories about how something didn't happen, like someone with an expired license was let go and allowed to get home in time to keep their job and therefore didn't end up stealing because they lost their job and had no other way to earn money.

Going to jail can have a huge ripple effect on an individual and their community that isn't accounted for.

The parable of the broken window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) seems apt here.

Perhaps your neighbor could tell the stories of every person who didn't do that as a counterpoint? It's the only way to be fair.

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