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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

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