[mslt]

I’d suggest considering empathy once you get past the anger, their former selves would be equally repulsed by their behavior, and for many I expect their current selves feel similarly despite their lack of control. The villains here aren’t the broken people.

[jdross]

The villains are the people who let these people continue to commit crimes and make life worse for others in the name of empathy instead of quickly and forcefully moving them into compassionate care where they have any chance of recovering and joining the vast majority as contributors to society.

[Blackthorn]

Compassionate care does not exist for people like this.

[alphager]

*in the US

[Blackthorn]

Which, notably, is the place where this happened and therefore the place we're discussing.

[laughing_man]

The villains are those of us who tolerate this kind of behavior in the name of compassion.

[TurdF3rguson]

You shouldn't tolerate the behavior, but announcing disgust for people who are struggling is just not helpful.

[laughing_man]

Lots of people who are struggling don't become thieves.

[TurdF3rguson]

Right, like I said don't tolerate the behavior, but that doesn't mean every thief is an irredeemable piece of shit who doesn't deserve help or empathy.

There should be something in the middle, I hope we can agree on that. We're talking about addiction and property damage here, not a homicidal psychopath.

[xp84]

> not a homicidal...

Even murderers also get the same assumption, from the same liberal voices, that it's really due to their lack of opportunity.

> but that doesn't mean every thief...

Sure maybe, but I think a lot of the blowback that people who advocate for this more compassionate view of criminals are starting to see, is because it seems that they won't admit that any thief is an irredeemable POS, which reads as gaslighting to everyone (poor or not, even including other criminals) who has spent time around actual criminals.

By doing things like California's Prop 47, which had the very real result of making it virtually impossible for most thieves to ever go to prison (at least the ones who can do math), we've codified into law that all thieves are just nice people who apparently had some kind of "misunderstanding" about property.

So when someone has their work truck burgled or their business robbed for the 6th time, and the police won't even come because it was an "under $950" misdemeanor, they would rather see all theft dealt with harshly than keep the status quo.

[TurdF3rguson]

Right, I'm not arguing against holding people accountable, but you can do that and not frame it with words like "disgust". We still have to lock up murderers, because they murder people.