In SF I've seen first-hand groups of youths filling up their backpacks with store items and running off laughing. They don't even run more than a block before slowing down to walk because they know nothing will happen. Thousands of dollars of items are taken but because of the new law where theft under $1000 per person is considered a misdemeanor, nothing happens. I talked with the merchant and she said that the police in SF don't even respond. It's shocking to me, maybe I'm naive, how quickly the changes in law get exploited to the maximum.
Property crime is rampant in a lot of the Bay Area. Violent crime has hit historic lows. I've learned to never keep valuables in your car and always lock your doors, but I also feel safe walking around in a number of places that historically have had really bad reputations, like even the Tenderloin.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame changes in laws, though. In my experience, property crime is up because the police don't do anything when they get a report of a theft or burglary. If there's a fight, drug deal, or even just a drunk person stumbling around, the police will be out in force. If somebody got robbed, well, good luck, they'll take your statement and then you're on your own.
Now, perhaps that has to do with incentives and the police knowing that the offender isn't going to jail even if they pick him up for burglary. But it seems like there could still be a healthy middle ground where property crime offenses still result in fines, restitution, community service, and probation without needing to lock kids up in prison.
The city refuses to enforce property crimes. Even if the police make an arrest, nothing comes out of it. Many residents consider it to be "criminalizing poverty", thus it is socially unacceptable to enforce property crimes. Sure, there are specific roles (e.g. the District Attorney) that have control over this, but they answer to city hall, and they respond to voters' desires. Ultimately it's on us residents for how property crime became de-facto legal.
I think it starts with the fact that being penniless is illegal. You can’t poop, you can’t build shelter. You can’t vend small items like snacks or clothing. All of that is illegal. So poverty truly is illegal in SF.
So, the poor will be criminalized regardless of whether they steal, what’s their incentive not to steal? From their perspective, they’re already criminals for not being rich, why not act like it?
Add to that the fact that most plots of land were illegally seized and resold. So from a moral perspective the landowners in SF are criminals too.
The city needs to take those issues seriously before they can reasonably expect the poor to cease their mischief. Without a navigable legal framework for the poor to subsist, and without a property court committed to restitution of stolen land, I don’t see how we can in good faith demand people refrain from stealing iPhones.
As far as I can tell California is right in the middle of 50 states in terms of property crime (a little below actually at 26th-27th) [1] so I’m not sure where this doom and gloom is coming from. Well, I did find a few laughable articles from mass media claiming that prop 47 had some impact, it itmdoesnt hold up when looking at demographics across the country and over a long time.
So if I get mugged and want the police involved I'm incentivized to actually act with reasonable force (like, for example, trying to force my stuff back from the assailant) in order for the police to get involved and me get my stuff back?
Just because something is a misdemeanor doesn't mean nothing happens. If you are convicted with a misdemeanor you still cam get a fine, community service, probation (and violating parole IS a felony), and even a jail sentence of up to 12 months. For theft of less than $1000 that sounds like a perfectly reasonable punishment.
I don't know why police aren't responding to these calls, but it's not because those committing these crimes aren't going to face a (reasonable) punishment.
That's the root of the problem. The police and prosecutors simply aren't interested in misdemeanors, despite the fact that the penalties can be quite severe.
I think because for decades so many crimes were potential felonies that police and prosecutors used the misdemeanor/felony dividing line to systemize the allocation of resources--prosecute felonies, ignore misdemeanors. Most of these felonies were ultimately prosecuted as misdemeanors through plea arrangements, which shows another aspect of the system: heavy potential penalties made it easier to secure pleas, which reinforced reliance on felonies to filter prosecutions.
Now that penalties are actually fair, police and prosecutors need to change their habits. But they haven't, despite the fact that they'll openly admit they won't prosecute the exact same crimes they once did.
It's perverse and there's no excuse for it. Felonies may have made it easier to secure plea deals, but misdemeanors are easier to prosecute from a technical perspective[1] and because of the lower penalty easier to secure plea deals closer to the maximum sentence. It's an open question whether they're cheap enough, but nobody has yet even bothered to suggest it's not practical, let alone prove it or show that there aren't measures we could take to streamline enforcement.
[1] More safeguards in place to ensure fair trial when felonies are involved. Compare traffic court, where indigent aren't even guaranteed counsel. Indeed, counsel for indigent defendants is only required by the Federal constitution for potential sentences of 6 months or longer. First offense shoplifting kids could theoretically be swiftly prosecuted in the blink of an eye (especially given camera evidence), though in some states that may require changes in the law as defendant protections were often fashioned in the context of insane penalties for common offenses.
In San Francisco at least, it really does mean nothing happens. There have been instances of stabbings (non-lethal) and the perpetrator was spotted in public days later.
The vast majority of those incidents involve the homeless, though, even though they're not all reported that way. There's a ton of issues to unpack there so I won't even bother trying, but nonetheless it's a distinction that matters at least in terms of understanding what's happening and why.
The hand of one is the hand of all. If they come as a group and together steal $500 x 5 it isn't merely 5 misdemeanors its 5 participants in one felony.
Presumably retail stores have insurance to cover this. I wonder if we can get data on the cost of insurance or general actuarial data that might be better than what the crime statistics would show.
Although the police should have these statistics as well, since it is probably impossible to file a claim without a police report in hand.
Prop 47 happened at the end of 2014, while the trend on those charts started at least 10 years ago. If anything, it looks like 2015 was a notably bad year with little decrease over the previous year.
There doesn't seem to be anything to support that idea.
>It's shocking to me, maybe I'm naive, how quickly the changes in law get exploited to the maximum.
It shouldn’t be shocking. The people who push this sort of feel-good legislation always, always, always fail to think about how these policies can be exploited or handwave away such concerns by assuming that the number of people who would do so is vanishingly small.
I've witnessed a teenage girl just grabbed a store item on the shelf in Starbucks and ran away. On another instance I've seen the video of a night break-in with a girl just used a hammer to break the glass on the door to open it, came in, and cleaned out the cash register. Yeah, they are very brazen.
Ok this still seems like a problem with enforcement and not with the law. We should not need increased sentences simply to get police protection from nuisance behavior. Undue inflation of consequences for smaller crimes has many negative side effects for our society - including increased cost of incarceration and long-term negative productivity of citizens. This is why these crimes were reduced in their sentencing - it seems like enforcement needs to catch up on a new balance.
On paper, I would agree with you that up to 12 months of jail time for a relatively minor crime like shoplifting is reasonable. In practice, it appears the result of the new law is that the police don't bother showing up and property crime essentially isn't enforced.
I'm all for rapid unpleasant but not cruel consequences.
The biggest thing seems to be preventing those administering the consequences from indulging in sadism, or exploiting those who they administer.
If the consequence for minor property damage(think public defecation, minor vandalism etc) a 2-4 hour shift cleaning the streets, potentially connects people with the consequences of their actions without becoming cruel
Maybe spend a small fraction of that million on a child much earlier?
Making jail "cheaper for taxpayers" tends to mean things like more mandatory labour, more phone calls that cost $5 / min, etc. Trying to squeeze money out of inmates will only make them resent the system even more.
We could bring back large-scale public executions.
Make the punishment for shoplifting being tortured to death in a public square, and the cost of prison will go down. Sounds shocking to you? It used to be the standard in the Western world, until just a couple of centuries ago.
I live in a community with a massive number of Somali refugees. Amputated hands for crime/whatever are a common sight among the older men. Somalia is one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Over time, Europe has abolished the death penalty. They have the lowest murder rates in the history of civilization. In the US, there are wide variations between states for violent crime. Unsurprisingly, the states with the most draconian laws have the highest rates of crime.
I've concluded that violent punishment does not reduce violent crime.
I don't think that comparison is fair. Europe is an advanced, civilised and homogeneous place; Somalia and the US are nothing like that (for different reasons)
It's an absolutely fair comparison. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that all of Europe was unimaginably barbaric by modern standards. Literally millions of people were put to death in gruesome ways for crimes we'd consider trivial (or not even crimes) today. And yet, the murder rate dropped right along with the end of absurdly draconian punishment.
Moreover, the violent crime rates for many parts of the US are no higher than in Europe. Coincidentally, those places tend to be the same states that have ended capital punishment.
Now, I'm not drawing a causal relationship between draconian punishment and an increase in crime. I'm just saying there's demonstrably no relationship between "tough on crime" harsh sentencing and a decrease in crime. Fear of violent retribution by the State is not what stops people from committing crimes. We have to look at other reasons.
Property crimes are not punished in California and the problem is acute when Gun ownership is also discouraged. While techies in bay area might only see an occasional car break-ins or theft the problem in Central and northern California is of theft of copper wires, fence wires, illegal dumping etc.
I worked with lot of self help groups in California and learned that the cops and prosecutors would rather go after soft targets than real criminals. For example catching those kids stealing $1000 worth of stuff from store requires a cop to run after them fight with those kids (which sometimes might turn fatal). The cop would rather catch a normal kid in wrong place at wrong time because that kid will not fight back.
While compassionate criminal justice reform is needed I think we should also pay attention to the fact that law obedience does not wither away.
> The cop would rather catch a normal kid in wrong place at wrong time because that kid will not fight back.
That sounds like a real problem to fix - incentivizing our law enforcement to go after "easy" targets does not create the sort of society I want to be in. I don't see how increasing sentences helps change this (if the sentences are being selectively applied anyway), and gun ownership is likewise orthogonal (shooting "easy" targets doesn't sound better, nor does encouraging vigilantism, which you did NOT suggest, but is a logical conclusion if law enforcement isn't doing their job).
Any ideas on how to improve the equal application of law enforcement?
Do we really need to throw shoplifting kids into prison, which will only serve as a training school for worse crime? Stores have insurance for this kind of loss.
Return or replace the stolen items as restitution. Pay the value of the stolen items as punishment. And since we want poor kids to get the same lesson as rich kids, make them work the value of their punishment off with a real job, like graffiti removal or trash pickup or municipal grounds-keeping or something.
Sliding down the slope means replacing insurance with government, and turning this into a type of basic income. Let people take what they want from the store, and pay the store back with taxes.
>groups of youths filling up their backpacks with store items and running off laughing. They don't even run more than a block before slowing down to walk because they know nothing will happen.
i'm completely against locking them up and ruining their lives for what in most cases is just a [stupid] fun for them. We do know that the brain of teenager is biologically flawed to correctly estimate risks/consequences of things like that. Yet it is the duty of society to help correct the flaw and teach them a lesson. I think something like allowing store owners to shoot using salt charges (an old USSR method for situations like this, no serious injury, yet supposed to be very painful for a few days) will make these youngsters running much faster and laughing less :)
In more general - while corporal punishment is an unquestionably bad thing on its own, when it comes to the choice of corporal punishment vs. situation of 2nd graders already having a rap sheet, i'm not sure what is better for society long-term.
Except now that maximum penalties are reduced, there's less risk of life-destroying consequences unfairly meted out. Teenagers especially may be less responsive to consequentialist preventive measures (i.e. punishment), but they are responsive to some degree. It's not tenable to argue that an environment of zero punitive consequences won't increase the incidence of crime, especially property crime.
if you notice, i'm not arguing against punishment. The punishment is a must. The best punishment would teach the violator instead of just punishing per.se.
>Teenagers especially may be less responsive to consequentialist preventive measures (i.e. punishment), but they are responsive to some degree.
Exactly. The issue is that the more immediate/instant punishment works better for teenager mind than the chance of delayed/procedural/etc punishment. The immediate punishment is what helps the forming brain to develop cause/consequences machinery of behavior.
