> These thefts not only hurt the companies but also hurt each buyer who will have to pay indirectly for the added cost of operations.
Is this damage more then the cost of prosecuting and punishing the thieves? If not, it's not worth it.
Is this damage more then the cost of prosecuting and punishing the thieves? If not, it's not worth it.
So you are saying any crime that causes less than a few thousand dollars worth of damage is not worth prosecuting?
How would you like it if I were to break in to your house through a window (a $1,000 expense) and steal your $2,500 MacBook Pro? The $3,500 in damages is less than the cost of identifying, arresting, prosecuting and punishing me. Not worth it - just let it go?
It's not a question of whether this damage is more, it's a question of whether the prosecution would reduce the total amount of future-damage that occurs as well. People who are in a jail are not stealing. People who expect significant risk of significant jail time are also not stealing, while those who expect minimal risk might be.
These factors easily outweigh the cost of any single theft.
This naive first order thinking is why we can’t have nice things. Yes, prosecuting a guy for stealing $100 headphones might cost more than the merchandise, but you cannot think about this in isolation from broader social context. By showing that you will not prosecute crimes under certain monetary value, you’re sending a signal that these can now be done with no consequence, in effect enabling more and more crime to happen. It’s not about a pair of headphones, it’s about the career of crime for the perp you’re enabling, and the crime careers of the imitators.
The bigger question is where even is the LAPD?