Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpablo | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn’t want to live in a place where crimes below $1,000 go unpunished.

Perhaps there are alternatives other than "small crimes go unpunished" and "people make false admissions of guilt, pressured by the ruinous cost of the justice system, 300 jurors needed for a single trial"

If we've got a Lamborghini justice system, delivering amazing performance to people with a spare $250k and doing nothing for anyone else - some would say that's not the right price/performance trade off.

False dichotomy?

Ignoring smaller crimes just because they're under $1,000 isn't the answer. things can quickly spiral. How many times do you wake up to your car scratched window broken or whatever and would be ok ?

> False dichotomy?

Yes, I'm trying to say it's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of other ways you could organise a justice system, many of which would lead to more just results.

For example - a fixed price system. 8 hours wages from the two parties to the dispute buys 30 minutes with one judge and two lawyers. More than enough time to deal with a minor matter like a scratched car. Or if you prefer a continental-style inquisitorial system, you can lose the lawyers and have 90 minutes with a judge. The fees mean judges and lawyers take home 5x the average salary.

If you pay close attention, many of the replies are concerned more about exacting punishment than moving toward justice.

How often do you get that sort of crime attended to and resolved satisfactorily?

California's got this experiment going I believe.

I don't like living in a place where wage theft dwarves all other thefts combined, but we put ridiculous resources towards petty crime.

By the way, the stat you mention counts consensual arrangements as wage theft, probably the large majority of it (e.g. hiring illegal immigrants for under the minimum wage). Calling that "theft" is a rhetorical move, much like libertarians calling taxation "theft": it borrows the moral weight of stealing for something that's legally and morally quite different. If the stat had been calculated from asking workers, "does your employer owe you money that they refuse to pay?", I suspect the number would drop dramatically.

You don't think large corporations are stealing from their workers?

I'm saying that much of what's called "wage theft" isn't theft in any normal sense of the word. It's the equivalent of calling employees who take long bathroom breaks or slack off on the clock "wage thieves." Do employees slack off on the job? Yes. Do corporations hire contractors when labor regulations forbids them to? Yes. Is either one comparable to theft? No.

Almost never. The larger the corporation the more strictly the rules are followed. I have worked for fintech startups and have some horrifying stories that would absolutely never fly at a larger company.

Calling the arrangements consensual is also a rhetorical move.

Wage theft is a real crime and you don't get to rename it because your feelings are somehow hurt. Calling taxation "theft" is just vapid right wing mccarythism. Rich people paid mccarthy money to lie over and over again because at the time it was illegal to broadcast those lies on tv or radio. But a senator was immune and could lie all they wanted.

You are never going to be right about anything if you actually think what you posted makes any sense.

Sure, I was just pointing out why the stat is misleading. People unfamiliar with the study or the term would assume it refers to employers outright withholding agreed-upon pay.

If you only counted cases that meet the legal definition of the crime of "wage theft," the figure would much lower.

Gotta keep the poors in line.

To be clear, you're claiming that wrongdoing by one party justifies wrongdoing by another, and your enabling of the latter because you're ideologically aligned with it?

I'd also be interested to know what the crime they were trying to get a lead on was. If it's another case of minor tagging then I can empathize more with the concerns about the prosecution, but if it's something more dire then frankly using judicial leverage strikes me as entirely appropriate.

Im saying they are wasting everybodies time and money and by spending large resources on petty crime like graffiti instead of spending that time and money on prosecuting systemic crime and theft by employers that occurs far more frequently.

If someone gets stabbed outside my house every day with no charges filed, yeah im going to say spending resources prosecuting a fist fight at a bar is a waste of resources.

But GP made it clear that the graffiti charge wasn't the target, it was intended to pressure the person involved into turning on a different criminal associate. Ignoring that reality in favor of focusing exclusively on the charge itself seems unhelpful to me.

"25 to life for jaywalking, but you'll walk free if you snitch" sounds like extortion to me.

If he's an accomplice, them charge him with that, and turn it into a classical prisoner's dilemma. Don't just make up bullshit charges, that's abuse of the justice system.

Except they're not trumping up penalties, it's just "Pay the fine for Jaywalking or snitch."

In this case the person did a little more than Jaywalking so they're on the hook for more. It's also possible to have information on a criminal act or conspiracy without being an accomplice.

I appreciate the extremely... principled morality of some here, but the law isn't an ethical framework, it's a practical one informed by ethical principles. It's also not a computer program, people are involved who make decisions based on a number of factors ranging from professional and selfless, to careerist and selfish. That's life.

A really easy way to avoid all of this is to stay out of the system, it's not as though he's in for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving child.

Extortion for testimony doesn't tend to produce reliable testimony.

Perjuring yourself into a felony to avoid a $500 fine on a misdemeanor sure would be a choice, I'm not convinced it's one frequently made.

It's not (convictable) perjury if it's what the government tells you to say.

That’s not how this works, maybe you should learn more about how plea deals and testimony work in practice.

“Protections against compelled speech are for numbskulls” I write, sweat dripping from my brow “Extortion is good you idiot, read a book” and the crowd goes wild. Michelangelo wipes the tears from his eyes and begins chiseling my face onto Mount Genius

“To be clear, you’re saying something that’s impossible to infer from what you wrote because I made it up?” lmao

Im sure you’re familiar with the problem that lower thresholds creates a tool for selective application.

and still. limited resources means some crimes will go unpunished.

let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?

The interesting thing about thresholds is that antisocial behavior models itself to the threshold, whether by conscious awareness or by an evolutionary pattern.

  The pair is accused of stealing around $3,200 worth of merchandise, primarily meat, seafood, and produce, from one or more Safeway locations across 14 separate incidents.

https://sfist.com/2026/05/14/police-arrest-man-accused-of-re...

structuring is illegal for tax evasion too!

obviously if someone is a repeat offender then as they cross the threshold, chop-chop, straight to jail, charge them with the whole batch of crimes together.

it doesn't mean keep no records of crimes and don't respond at all.

Question: do you advocate for police to maintain dossiers on people's activities in order to arrest them once some combination of those activities cross the threshold? Like KYC for shoplifters? Do you think these records should be jurisdictionally/geographically limited?

I assume police already stores dossiers on reported crimes.

Initially it's a report. Place, time, allegation, supporting evidence.

The question is how much (automated) detection ought to be allowed, what's the retention period, and so on.

Flock is a bad trade-off, but that doesn't mean there's no point in collecting data. If every datum is a semi-tangible report, then the sensitivity/specificity has quite a good change of being high (especially compared to dragnet surveillance with post-hoc data fishing).

Criminals have some brains. What do you think they'll do when they figure out that crimes under $1k go unpunished?

Look what happened with shoplifters.

Doesn’t that prove actually that the act of theft is not some calculated needs based negotiation in need of “the right threshold” to deter crime?

Like fare hopping, first half of my life i thought how unfair that i have to drone away as a tool of society and pay like a shmuck meanwhile these freeloaders have happily escaped the matrix.

second half of life i realized being unwilling or unable to pay $2.50 for public transist is an issue between that person and their life situation. If that’s what they need, I support the subsidy.

safe transit is important exactly for the people who barely have a few dollars for transit. subsidized tickets are the way to go. by enabling and allowing fare evasion for those who need it unfortunately allows those to get in who don't need to.

https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2026/news20260908

Good framing. its a better way to convey that crime isn’t simply solved by punishing the “bad” people.

yeah we have extremely recent examples of this philosophy playing out and people are here defending it. It's bonkers!

> let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?

The criminals start with the ones below $1,000 and then progress above. If you start punishing it earlier, you won't have to deal with as many above $1,000 crimes in the first place.

If you can’t pay for your next meal $20 might as well be $2 thousand or $20 thousand. Thats why overdraft fees are exploitative.

A person doesn’t steal a sandwich from 7-11, not get caught, then suddenly realize they can drain unsuspecting grandmas’ bank accounts by implementing a long con through masquerading as a long lost nephew through Facebook.

Which <1000 crime did maddof start with?

Your claim makes for a good sound bite but its just not how it works. Subway evasion isn’t a gateway crime.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard that some big box stores like Target and Walmart allow shoplifters to get away with petty crime but save all evidence of these crimes to one day prosecute once the total shoplifted goes above the threshold of petty crime. Sometimes, these people would be goaded into this lifestyle by people who have agreements with Loss Prevention teams. Everyone wins except the shoplifter.

How is one earning money through graffiti damage

Ah yes, the graffiti artist to bank robber pipeline.. well done.

So mug a rich person, deal with it. Mug a normal person and ignore it.

Well that would be assault (at least, battery probably too), so wouldn’t fall under the hypothetical $1000 threshold.

Pick pocket then. Or shop list. Steal someone’s $700 car and you’re fine, steal a Mercedes and the full force of the law comes down.

I wouldn’t want to live in a place where innocent people are forced under threat of financial destruction to make false confessions for crimes they didn’t commit, but here we are.

I don't want to live in a place where a fine of < $1000 causes 100 people to have to take a day off of work only paying them $30 for their time.

I'd be fine with it if crimes with no identifiable victim below $1k went un-punished.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com