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Kudos to The Atlantic, one of the two remaining media magazines that will even tackle controversial issues, for admitting that shoplifting exists. The standard media narrative is that it’s a right-wing conspiracy theory. And all the locked glass cases at your local store is some weird corporate plot to make people worry about crime while they leave. Why? Who knows. Mumble something about “late stage capitalism” if asked.
On the other hand, like most current narratives, there’s a hesitancy to state the obvious.
On Twitter, the story is pitched as, “People think it’s okay to steal—and no one knows how to stop them.”
Really? No one knows how.
Prison is a good way to stop criminals from roaming the streets. The article seems to minimize that.
In the past few years, states such as Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana have ratcheted up penalties, especially for people caught stealing in a group. Next month, Californians will vote on a referendum that would toughen penalties for shoplifting, essentially undoing the reforms voters approved just a decade ago.
Whether this will have an effect on thieves’ behavior is unclear. Shawn Hunter is 29 years old and has racked up more than 40 criminal charges in D.C., plus additional charges in Maryland and Virginia. Earlier this year, in a Target store in a wealthy section of D.C., two cops conducting a retail-theft surveillance operation watched Hunter stuff $54 worth of items into his bag and leave without paying. The officers stopped him just outside the door.
Hunter did not respond to requests for an interview, but I sat behind him in May in D.C. Superior Court as he waited his turn for a hearing. The judge called him to task for having missed a previous court date, but his lawyer explained that he had a good excuse: He’d failed to appear because he was in another courtroom on that same day, answering to yet another theft charge.
Hunter fidgeted throughout the hearing. The second he was dismissed, he jumped up, took the escalator two steps at a time, and burst out of the courthouse with a yelp of regained freedom.
The writer talks about southern states raising penalties and then goes to D.C., a place that tried to legalize carjacking, to demonstrate why criminal charges don’t work… because the criminals aren’t locked up.
The article plumbs the depth of dumb lefty takes. There’s Mr. Osterweil
As Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting, told NPR, looting “freaks people out. But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state, it’s basically nonviolent. You’re mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it’s just hurting insurance companies on some level. It’s just money. It’s just property. It’s not actually hurting any people.”
It’s not hurting anyone. Except those who own or work at stores. Those who pay insurance. Those who pay for goods that now cost more.
If anyone had looted all the copies of In Defense of Looting from stores leaving Mr. Osterweil with no royalties, it might have been another matter.
And then there are ‘headdesk’ moments like this.
Why is shoplifting surging now? The coronavirus pandemic and social media are the two factors most often cited by researchers and industry executives.
Why? Because pro-crime rhetoric legitimized theft and states like California effectively legalized it.
But the surge in shoplifting is one piece of a larger collapse of the social forces that once restrained wayward behavior at least as much as the law did: trust, guilt, and shame. It took a lot to get us to this point—huge technological and psychological disruption; the atomization of American life by the anonymity of the internet; the isolation imposed by COVID lockdowns, which eroded many people’s sense of empathy; a lack of consequences for stealing, attributable to reductions in policing and store staffing.
There’s truth to some of that, and the moral collapse of society is a major factor in eliminating conventional notions of right and wrong, but dismantling the criminal justice system is playing an immediate role in enabling the crime wave.
Democrats plan to turn every town into Oakland, Springfield, East Palestine, Asheville,
and if none of those work: Lahaina.
Good luck.
Put them in jail and throw away the key. Put them on chain gangs to build roads. That will stop it.
Liberalism is an anti-societal norm. Exists from anti-reasoning . It is derived from a Godless faith . Progressivism Is without a compass and cast a future dependent on man …. Best expressed in the forgotten movie “ A Clockwork Orange “ . Left wing politics is an irrational, faith-based ideology in the unreal.
These Marxist politicians funded by so-called modernist lobbyist have no regard for you or your private property. To them the stores are capitalist oppressors and are explicitly raided as a reward for the mobs who attack our civilizations common order.
One can only wonder how much terrified communities will tolerate as sheep being sheared and lead to slaughter.
“………wonder how much terrified communities will tolerate”? Look at Amenia. Look at Darfur Sudan. Look at Nigeria. Look at Serbia and Kosovo.
Once they trap you inside your country then it is not “toleration”, it is you cannot escape and they have the guns and copters.
All this madness, the doing and allowing of evil, is intentional. It is the “let’s destroy American so we can rebuild it the way we like it” plan. The same people that have brought the madness on us also —
Hate white people
Hate Christians
Hate capitalism
Hate heterosexual people
Then there are the jihadists that want to destroy America too. The want to kill us and enslave us.
The answer is quite easy just lock up Shop Lifters into Prison for 10 years and forget all this Meditation Classes
We must remember that Marxist ideology doesn’t recognize private property. Private ownership is the domain of evil capitalism. Marxists don’t believe that anyone truly owns anything. It belongs to the state, that has the responsibility of doling out material goods according to one’s need.
In the Principles of Economics course I teach each semester, I emphasize that to change people’s behavior you need to change the costs and/or the benefits of that behavior. I look forward to assigning this essay to my students.
I will be assigning this essay to students. I will point out that men are 9 times as likely to be incarcerated during their lifetime as women. I will then ask is this “disparate outcome” irrefutable evidence of systemic misandry. (I’ll have to explain what “misandry” means.)
Reduce the cost of a behavior and you’ll get more of it. Rocket science?
Enforcing shoplifting laws, especially when there is mob shoplifting, will have a “disparate impact” on some group. For the sake of achieving “equity,” such laws are not to be enforced…
The numb skull who wrote the article in question should expand and theorize that no one knows how to prevent murder either. How? I wonder would he? I know, create a Marxist utopia and eliminate all who would be in opposition. That’s it.
Has Vicky been burgled, stolen from, assaulted and robbed?
Might be an eye-opener for her!
The solution is obvious to anyone with 2 braincells to rub together
Theft insurance only covers a fraction of stolen merchandise.
“Next month, Californians will vote on a referendum that would toughen penalties for shoplifting, essentially undoing the reforms voters approved just a decade ago.”
Yes, thank the responsible petitioners of CA for proposition 36, which will allow felony charges against possession of certain drugs such as meth, and for thefts under $950. if the defendant has two prior drug or theft convictions. I don’t know if there’s a minimum limit. Hopefully it isn’t the price of a candy bar or bottle of booze. Nail the poison peddlers and mass looters with felonies, sure, but not petty possession of drugs meant for personal use or theft of low cost items.
Drugs should be legal for adults anyway. If people want to poison themselves, let them. They’re going to do it anyway and NONE of the penalties and stupid rehabilitation hoaxes work. The drug classes and other useless and phony “rehabilitation” methods are just designed to raise revenue for cities, counties and states, not to actually discourage drug use.