| >Method and opportunity are usually denied by even the least effort at security. At what point does it become non-opportunistic to steal something? if you have to cut a rope or chain? if you have to kick in a door to get to it? >The morality encoded into the justice system is not built for the benefit of the people typically getting sent to prisons. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, do you want a justice system where "stealing something is OK as long as it was easy to do" is a core value? > The enforcement of property law typically tells those who have suffered "petty" property crime to fill out a report and sod off, while those who suffered "grand" property crime get the benefit of police investigation. This is just pragmatism. Police departments have limited budgets and the community is better served by putting those resources towards more serious crimes. Monetary value of damages is an easy metric to compare the seriousness of crimes, and to prioritise the allocation of budget towards investigations accordingly. >that person now has a reasonable motive to steal bicycles: society owes them one, and apparently does not consider it a crime worth investigating. This is incomprehensible thinking to me. Just because you have been wronged does not give you permission to wrong others. The person who stole the bicycle owes it to the victim (or the replacement value), not society. >If the law does not equally benefit everyone, those who benefit least are not ethically bound to obey it. If you don't agree with a law you can campaign to get it changed, or leave the jurisdiction where that law is in effect. You do not get a free pass for breaking the law just because you don't like it. > It is not necessary to understand why the motive exists, but only to realize that some people will have it, and are not necessarily evil because of it. Having a motive to steal something is not the same as acting on it and actually stealing the thing. Knowingly harming others is evil, to some degree. Obviously stealing some copper is far less of a crime than committing murder, but both are wrong. >Deny them the opportunity, and they will not commit that particular crime. Or they'll just go look for another opportunity. Baiting criminals proactively catches people who would commit crimes regardless. |
I understand if criminal justice reform is not one of your political issues. It's easy to ignore what happens in the system if it is not. But I encourage you to look into it. After you do, tell me that it isn't mainly a mass of unfortunates being lined up to be kicked in the head, systematically, with the genuinely bad people--who really do need to be separated from the rest of us--as a minority of the cases.
Crime is down since 1980, yet prison populations are way up. Why is that? Who are the people getting put in the prisons? Who are the people profiting from this trend?