If bankers can get away with treble damages, then maybe shoplifters should to.
Even if you are super cynical, throwing a shoplifter in jail accomplishes what? If they have a job, they'll lose their job. If they have a home, they'll probably get evicted. They'll have to go through a court system that has to deal with this. People will have to do a bunch of work to move this person through the system.
And at the end of the day someone goes to jail a bit and leaves, and there's no safety net, so they're just permanently worse off. Congrats, you not only wasted an outsized amount of resources for petty theft, but now the person is back in society with less means of getting anything done in a legal way.
If you consider people to actually be people who you want to see improve, there's a hell of a lot better things to be done than putting people in jail for petty theft. At least in the US system.
>If bankers can get away with treble damages, then maybe shoplifters should to
What other crimes do you hold this standard with? Should rapists and murders not go to jail since bankers get away with crimes?
>Even if you are super cynical, throwing a shoplifter in jail accomplishes what?
It removes a person willing to shoplift from society.
>If they have a job, they'll lose their job. If they have a home, they'll probably get evicted. They'll have to go through a court system that has to deal with this. People will have to do a bunch of work to move this person through the system.
Same thing happens with any criminal. Why not avoid the paper work and avoid arresting murderers.
>And at the end of the day someone goes to jail a bit and leaves, and there's no safety net, so they're just permanently worse off. Congrats, you not only wasted an outsized amount of resources for petty theft, but now the person is back in society with less means of getting anything done in a legal way.
>If you consider people to actually be people who you want to see improve, there's a hell of a lot better things to be done than putting people in jail for petty theft. At least in the US system.
Perhaps this is true, but you are putting the cart before the horse. We need to fix the things you mentioned before we avoid jail time.
Even if you are super cynical, throwing a shoplifter in jail accomplishes what? If they have a job, they'll lose their job. If they have a home, they'll probably get evicted. They'll have to go through a court system that has to deal with this. People will have to do a bunch of work to move this person through the system.
And at the end of the day someone goes to jail a bit and leaves, and there's no safety net, so they're just permanently worse off. Congrats, you not only wasted an outsized amount of resources for petty theft, but now the person is back in society with less means of getting anything done in a legal way.
If you consider people to actually be people who you want to see improve, there's a hell of a lot better things to be done than putting people in jail for petty theft. At least in the US system.