Florida does it again: Soda theft bumped up to felony

[SVPD]

This is literally what you just said: "Rape is a proportional penalty for a succession of petty thefts."

No, it isn't.

Because that is a common consequence of time in a state prison, which is where this guy has a good chance of going for a FELONY CONVICTION, which is what I am personally disagreeing with.

That doesn't in any way equate to saying that rape is somehow a proportional penalty. Prison rape is a crime in itself. It's not an acceptable punishment for murder. Should we therefore not put murderers in prison because we need to try harder to eliminate prison rape? Sorry, if you're an adult in this country you know what prison is like. You know what a felony conviction does to your employability. It does not somehow become disproportionate to charge repeat offenders with felonies because of the way other people treat felons.

Again, FELONY CONVICTION. I am not saying that petty theft should be legal or accepted, but that it should be treated proportionately, and that the consequences of FELONY CONVICTIONS are not proportionate in any sense.

Begging the question.

The rest of your bullshit is really irrelevant and built on a tower of air.

In other words, you're unable to respond to it and so therefore just declaring it wrong based on nothing more than your own say-so like the blathering moron you are.

[AniThyng]

Oh yeah that McDonalds has no chance of being able to afford the 12$ a day they might lose.

Is this the same kind of reasoning that allows me the right to pirate software and movies from big corporations?

But only big corporations of course. I would never dream of pirating some poor indie developers work...

[Kamakazie Sith]

Oh yeah that McDonalds has no chance of being able to afford the 12$ a day they might lose.

Nice strawman. I said annoyance. If you are the owner of a store and someone keeps stealing from you that would be annoying. Can't you read? Not once did I say $12 would cause them to go out of business. Perhaps you should take your dishonesty somewhere else.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Which is the greater social cost? The loss of thousands of dollars a year (at the top end) for a corporation that had a net income of 5 billion dollars a year (making this literally a drop in the fucking bucket), or the expenditure of police time, court time, employee time, and the like, all just to take a petty thief and render him or her unable to find more than marginal employment with felony charges on their record? I bet that the actual loss to the economy is greater than that from a hundred such people

The expenditure of police time, court time, employee time and the like doesn't magically become greater because the thief qualifies for felony enhancement.

"whatever other stuff"? Jesus Christ, this is really the only thing you can easily steal at a fast-food restaurant besides shit like napkins and ketchup packets. Are we going to see that next? People doing prison time for repeatedly hoarding ketchup packets?

Do you have a better solution that doesn't include making it OK to steal?

[SVPD]

When, in your view, does rape become acceptable as a penalty for petty theft. Is it after the second time or the third time. I really would like to know.

When, in your view, does rape become acceptable as a penalty for any crime?

Anyone going to prison has a risk of being raped - and for that matter, of being the rapist. Therefore, since it's unacceptable, we should send no one to prison. Great. Now what do we do with them?

Here's a hint: Rape is a red herring. It's a problem, yes, but the fact is that prison rape is already unacceptable. We still have to move forward. Society cannot wait for its institutions to be perfect before putting them to use.

[Bakustra]

We should give people the chance to develop themselves, instead of declaring them lost causes, because people do have the potential to turn their life around. In fact, perhaps instead of throwing people in prison and looking the other way while they get raped, beaten, tortured, and starved, we should maybe try and direct them towards means towards turning their life around. Admittedly, this will never happen peacefully if you are a representational police officer, but I guess that that's that.

Also, you're a hypocrite for not endorsing the death penalty for all crimes, since if people cannot change themselves to the point where concealing a theft conviction would be beneficial to them, then they are irredeemable and nothing more than drains on society. Killing them all would seem to be the only rational result. But you cowardly retreat from this, instead declaring that all crooks are irredeemable (although leaving yourself enough breathing room for the inevitable retreat after someone actually calls you out on your disgusting ideology of hatred) and ranting about how, since I'm a left-winger, I must have a caricatured viewpoint. I'm actually laughing at the mental picture you probably have of me.

If you object to this, remember that you literally believe that people with a theft conviction can never be trustworthy again and you seem to think simultaneously that criminals never think about the law and yet the only reason taking lost property (that doesn't belong to you) doesn't give you a criminal mind is because it's not considered a theft by the law.

PS: We probably shouldn't put murderers in prison if we don't think that rape is acceptable! Maybe the prison system could be changed to eliminate prison rape. I'd start with preventing people in the justice system who believe in such a thing as a criminal mind from ever working above minimum wage again. This should eliminate them and their toxic viewpoints from shaping the prison and justice system, as those viewpoints produced the climate of rape and torture and mistreatment in prisons. Do you have any ideas for doing this, or do you consider it an inevitability?

When, in your view, does rape become acceptable as a penalty for petty theft. Is it after the second time or the third time. I really would like to know.

Rape is not the penalty. Felony conviction is. That the prison system needs to be fixed is a seperate issue, but keep building the strawman.

Rape is a foreseeable consequence of a felony conviction, therefore the people who convict someone of a felony are responsible if that person is raped, especially judges, police officers, and attorneys who are familiar with the prison system. If you let someone walk over the edge of a cliff, you are partially responsible for their death, and you are even more so if you push them towards the cliff's edge first. So why don't you think that the legal system is responsible for the rape of prisoners?

Rape is definitely a greater injustice than petty theft or drunk and disorderly, so why are we allowing it to happen?

Do you have a better solution that doesn't include making it OK to steal?

Take psychos who believe that criminals are irredeemable and give them rough, eye-for-an-eye type justice. Exile them from society. Force them to work the carnivals and the shit jobs for the rest of their lives. Make them live out their authoritarian existences scrabbling for a living, too vile to understand the irony.

With those fuckers out of the way, room is available to build a justice system that revolves around treating the causes rather than the symptoms. E.g. this guy may be a kleptomaniac. Get him psychotherapy and treatment to actually stop him from stealing things. Or he could have anger problems, or a number of other psychological issues which drive his criminal activities, all of which could be treated instead of fining him money or throwing him in prison.

Then again, maybe he simply doesn't really think it's that bad. So perhaps he could be required to attend classes on the social costs of petty theft. Or maybe he's poor and angry about his poverty and does things like this because of that deeper anger, in which case the justice system can't do much and society itself would have to be restructured to mitigate poverty. Well, that's a good thing anyways, and it probably would be necessary to build this sort of justice system in the first place. But in general, replace the current justice system, focused on punishments to reinforce the authority of the state, with one focused on fixing the problems that cause crime. Confinement should probably be reserved for people that commit crimes that merit it- murderers and the like, who probably need some isolation for therapy to really help them.

[Bakustra]

Here, I'm going to sum this up instead of writing unwieldy, welded-together posts:

I believe that this doesn't address the root cause of why this guy stole a soda, and that the consequences of the current justice system mean inhumane results for this guy, and that a better system would focus on causes and addressing them instead of punishments and expanding them. Also, the term "criminal mind" is meaningless and believing that it is a useful term is a warning sign of being a complete fucker.

[Aaron MkII]

Someone asked earlier about alternatives:

Fines, community service. No need to toss him in jail.

[Block]

Someone asked earlier about alternatives:

Fines, community service. No need to toss him in jail.

Ok, I agree with that, the first couple times. My problem comes in where it's repeated offenses, he's been given chances to change, and still doesn't. At some point you have to hold people accountable for their actions in an escalating manner. Maybe increased fines for each offense would work, maybe it wouldn't. Community service doesn't, because at least some of the time the groups assigned to oversee the person will sign off for an 8 hour day after half an hour of work (personal experience there, volunteered for community service so I didn't have to pay court costs on a speeding ticket.)

[Agent Fisher]

I believe that this doesn't address the root cause of why this guy stole a soda

Root cause? I assume it was cause he was drunk, had stolen stuff before and gotten a light sentence so he thought 'Fuck, why not? I'll just get a slap on the wrist when the cops get here, in the meantime, I'll be enjoying my buzz, drinking my soda.'

[Kamakazie Sith]

We should give people the chance to develop themselves, instead of declaring them lost causes, because people do have the potential to turn their life around. In fact, perhaps instead of throwing people in prison and looking the other way while they get raped, beaten, tortured, and starved, we should maybe try and direct them towards means towards turning their life around. Admittedly, this will never happen peacefully if you are a representational police officer, but I guess that that's that.

The assumptions into our personal character is becoming tiresome. You do not know us. Allow me to correct your petty little assumption. IF the government decided to change the criminal justice system to function how you suggest then I, and the majority...if not all... of all law enforcement, would comply.

Also, you're a hypocrite for not endorsing the death penalty for all crimes, since if people cannot change themselves to the point where concealing a theft conviction would be beneficial to them, then they are irredeemable and nothing more than drains on society. Killing them all would seem to be the only rational result. But you cowardly retreat from this, instead declaring that all crooks are irredeemable (although leaving yourself enough breathing room for the inevitable retreat after someone actually calls you out on your disgusting ideology of hatred) and ranting about how, since I'm a left-winger, I must have a caricatured viewpoint. I'm actually laughing at the mental picture you probably have of me.

You're delusional, Bakustra. Who here has said that all crooks are irredeemable? Hell, even with repeat offenders nobody has called them irredeemable. That's your imagination conjuring up more dishonesty.

By the way you failed to explain how holding a position for enhanced charge for repeated CONVICTIONS makes me a hypocrite because I don't believe theft ever qualifies for a the death penalty and you failed to explain how this subject was "retreated from" when you just barely brought it up.

If you object to this, remember that you literally believe that people with a theft conviction can never be trustworthy again and you seem to think simultaneously that criminals never think about the law and yet the only reason taking lost property (that doesn't belong to you) doesn't give you a criminal mind is because it's not considered a theft by the law.

You're not very good at determining what people "literally" believe. In fact, you should probably stop using that word.

PS: We probably shouldn't put murderers in prison if we don't think that rape is acceptable! Maybe the prison system could be changed to eliminate prison rape. I'd start with preventing people in the justice system who believe in such a thing as a criminal mind from ever working above minimum wage again. This should eliminate them and their toxic viewpoints from shaping the prison and justice system, as those viewpoints produced the climate of rape and torture and mistreatment in prisons. Do you have any ideas for doing this, or do you consider it an inevitability?

So you don't agree with the concept of criminlogy? Why?

So, do you want the system to be perfect before it can be used? If not...what numbers would you allow the use?

Rape is a foreseeable consequence of a felony conviction, therefore the people who convict someone of a felony are responsible if that person is raped, especially judges, police officers, and attorneys who are familiar with the prison system. If you let someone walk over the edge of a cliff, you are partially responsible for their death, and you are even more so if you push them towards the cliff's edge first. So why don't you think that the legal system is responsible for the rape of prisoners?

Rape is definitely a greater injustice than petty theft or drunk and disorderly, so why are we allowing it to happen?

So, if prisoner rape were rare or non-existent then would you agree to felony enhancement for repeated theft convictions?

Take psychos who believe that criminals are irredeemable and give them rough, eye-for-an-eye type justice. Exile them from society. Force them to work the carnivals and the shit jobs for the rest of their lives. Make them live out their authoritarian existences scrabbling for a living, too vile to understand the irony.

With those fuckers out of the way, room is available to build a justice system that revolves around treating the causes rather than the symptoms. E.g. this guy may be a kleptomaniac. Get him psychotherapy and treatment to actually stop him from stealing things. Or he could have anger problems, or a number of other psychological issues which drive his criminal activities, all of which could be treated instead of fining him money or throwing him in prison.

You do know that they aren't immediately thrown in prison, right? In fact, a petty theft conviction would likely earn you community service or maybe even a psychological evaluation if the indicators are there. Though I wonder how much money you're willing to spend trying to find some hidden cause that may or may not be there.

Then again, maybe he simply doesn't really think it's that bad. So perhaps he could be required to attend classes on the social costs of petty theft. Or maybe he's poor and angry about his poverty and does things like this because of that deeper anger, in which case the justice system can't do much and society itself would have to be restructured to mitigate poverty. Well, that's a good thing anyways, and it probably would be necessary to build this sort of justice system in the first place. But in general, replace the current justice system, focused on punishments to reinforce the authority of the state, with one focused on fixing the problems that cause crime. Confinement should probably be reserved for people that commit crimes that merit it- murderers and the like, who probably need some isolation for therapy to really help them.

Clearly you seem to think that these other reasons are the majority of the cause for why people steal. What do you base this off of?

[Kamakazie Sith]

Someone asked earlier about alternatives:

Fines, community service. No need to toss him in jail.

I asked. However, we aren't talking about first time offenses. In order to receive a felony enhancement you have to have several theft convictions, not arrests. For first time offenses the above is what happens.

[SVPD]

We should give people the chance to develop themselves, instead of declaring them lost causes, because people do have the potential to turn their life around. In fact, perhaps instead of throwing people in prison and looking the other way while they get raped, beaten, tortured, and starved, we should maybe try and direct them towards means towards turning their life around.

Really? How exactly is this to be accomplished? What incentive have they to turn their life around if there are no serious consequences to their actions? Shall we just shout "Swiper, no swiping!" at them?

Admittedly, this will never happen peacefully if you are a representational police officer, but I guess that that's that.

Yes yes, make sure you get the mandatory ad hom in there.

Also, you're a hypocrite for not endorsing the death penalty for all crimes, since if people cannot change themselves to the point where concealing a theft conviction would be beneficial to them, then they are irredeemable and nothing more than drains on society.

That's positively silly, and a strawman. You were the one concerned about "drains on society", not me, with your concern about the cost of prosecution versus the cost of the theft. I've only pointed out that you vastly underestimate the costs to society. I have not implied that we should eliminate anyone who is a drain.

By the way, even if you were correct, the word you'd be looking for is "inconsistent", not "hypocrite".

Killing them all would seem to be the only rational result.

Your ability to strawman is positively fascinating.

But you cowardly retreat from this, instead declaring that all crooks are irredeemable (although leaving yourself enough breathing room for the inevitable retreat after someone actually calls you out on your disgusting ideology of hatred) and ranting about how, since I'm a left-winger, I must have a caricatured viewpoint. I'm actually laughing at the mental picture you probably have of me.

Boy, you really can lay it on thick, can't you? "Disgusting ideology of hatred" is it now? "Cowardly retreat"? Wow. You really are good at using predjudical language to mask your strawman. You have done nothing but arbitrarily proclaim that somehow the position that society ought to punish petty theft means that one also believes it should execute all criminals without showing the slightest evidence of how these positions must necessarily coexist to allow consistency.

If you object to this, remember that you literally believe that people with a theft conviction can never be trustworthy again and you seem to think simultaneously that criminals never think about the law and yet the only reason taking lost property (that doesn't belong to you) doesn't give you a criminal mind is because it's not considered a theft by the law.

So in other words it's theft according to you to take minor items of lost or abandoned property. Fascinating. Unfortunately I don't recall anyone selecting you to determine for society what is and isn't theft.

As for the rest, the fact that a person is no longer trustworthy does not make them completely useless. There are plenty of jobs that a person can perform without needing to depend on their basic honesty.

PS: We probably shouldn't put murderers in prison if we don't think that rape is acceptable! Maybe the prison system could be changed to eliminate prison rape. I'd start with preventing people in the justice system who believe in such a thing as a criminal mind from ever working above minimum wage again. This should eliminate them and their toxic viewpoints from shaping the prison and justice system, as those viewpoints produced the climate of rape and torture and mistreatment in prisons. Do you have any ideas for doing this, or do you consider it an inevitability?

In other words, you have no solution at all except to say "we should eliminate it!". Duh. No kidding. You'd start by eliminating some vague class of people from the justice system based on what you imagine they think, and as if their ideas about the future employment prospects of inmates are in some way related to the profusion of sexual assault, while talking about "toxic viewpoints". Yes, I'm sure such a vague and ill-defined plan of stating the obvious and purging boogeymen will absolutely work wonders!

Rape is a foreseeable consequence of a felony conviction, therefore the people who convict someone of a felony are responsible if that person is raped, especially judges, police officers, and attorneys who are familiar with the prison system. If you let someone walk over the edge of a cliff, you are partially responsible for their death, and you are even more so if you push them towards the cliff's edge first. So why don't you think that the legal system is responsible for the rape of prisoners?

The person committing the felony can just as easily reasonably forsee going to prison and being raped as a consequnce; by your logic they are responsible for being raped as well. Not only that, but by your logic, it is reasonably forseeable that if a person is not punished after being detected committing a crime, they will conclude that it is acceptable and commit more crimes; thus the justice system is responsible for any recidivism coming from failure to punish them.

See how silly your logic sounds? Here's a clue: Rapists are responsible for rape.

Rape is definitely a greater injustice than petty theft or drunk and disorderly, so why are we allowing it to happen?

What do you mean "allowing"? Do you think prison rapists care if they have permission? Is that somehow the most important injustice in society, the prevention of which should take precendence over all others?

Take psychos who believe that criminals are irredeemable and give them rough, eye-for-an-eye type justice. Exile them from society. Force them to work the carnivals and the shit jobs for the rest of their lives. Make them live out their authoritarian existences scrabbling for a living, too vile to understand the irony.

Wow, so your solution is retribution on a massive scale against a large portion of society for no better reason than that they think a person's past actions reflect on their likely future actions? Brilliant. Good luck actually implementing this though; I have a feeling you'd be on the losing end of that civil war. In the meantime you've just established that you want to persecute people for their opinions. Yes, you're a paragon of social justice all right.

With those fuckers out of the way, room is available to build a justice system that revolves around treating the causes rather than the symptoms. E.g. this guy may be a kleptomaniac. Get him psychotherapy and treatment to actually stop him from stealing things. Or he could have anger problems, or a number of other psychological issues which drive his criminal activities, all of which could be treated instead of fining him money or throwing him in prison.

Ah yes, we can just treat all crime as a medical problem. Do you have any actual evidence that rehabilitation or treatment would actually work on most criminals? It doesn't even work on drug and alcohol offenders unless they want it to.

Then again, maybe he simply doesn't really think it's that bad. So perhaps he could be required to attend classes on the social costs of petty theft. Or maybe he's poor and angry about his poverty and does things like this because of that deeper anger, in which case the justice system can't do much and society itself would have to be restructured to mitigate poverty. Well, that's a good thing anyways, and it probably would be necessary to build this sort of justice system in the first place. But in general, replace the current justice system, focused on punishments to reinforce the authority of the state, with one focused on fixing the problems that cause crime. Confinement should probably be reserved for people that commit crimes that merit it- murderers and the like, who probably need some isolation for therapy to really help them.

So in other words, all we need to do in order to not punish petty theives with jail is re-structure society to eliminate poverty.

Great plan. Never mind that it also hinges on your idea that there's "treatment" available for every criminal out there. You haven't even demonstrated that the psychological tools and understanding even exist to make this work. You're talking about a justice system "focused on fixing the problems that cause crime" and yet you just suggested throwing a lot of people out on the margins of society simply for disapproving of criminals? You seriously want to complain that the justice system "reinforces the authority of the state" when you just said this:

Take psychos who believe that criminals are irredeemable and give them rough, eye-for-an-eye type justice. Exile them from society. Force them to work the carnivals and the shit jobs for the rest of their lives. Make them live out their authoritarian existences scrabbling for a living, too vile to understand the irony.

The only authoritarian here is you. You want a massive, arbitrary exercise of state authority to get rid of "psychos" you don't approve of, and then a massive restructuring of the society and the justice system according to your liking, based on vague allusions to theraputic justice that may not even exist, much less actually work. Your only problem with the supposed "authoritarians" is that things aren't going according to your fantasies.

And all this just to avoid jailing repeat petty thieves. brilliant.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

The stupid in this thread, it burns. You do not automaticly go to prison for a felony conviction, nor does it mean you'll never work again. I should know, I have a pair of felony convictions on my record (both from the same bit of stupidity), and have never once spent a night in jail, let alone gone to prison. Now if I didn't do any time for stealing $400.00 by means of forged checks, what makes you think this guy is going to get the maximum for walking out of McD's with a $1.00 soda? Most likely, he'll be fined, maybe be put on adult probation like I was, no rape involved. I don't really have a whole lot of sympathy for this guy, because, unlike me, he didn't learn anything after being busted multiple times, which has led to him being busted once again.

[Bakustra]

You don't seem to be capable of understanding that when I quote someone, I am following that with a response toward that person, as seen when you insisted that I was impugning your character, when in fact I was impugning SVPD's. Of course, you have no problem impugning mind, so you too are a hypocrite, unwilling to take what you give out.

As for the basis for my accusations:

Theft offenses reflect poorly on one's suitability for any trustworthy position. [...] We should essentially cover for thieves so that people who might hire them don't find out that they're thieves?

Do you or do you not admit that this is saying, via implication, that thieves are, a priori, irredeemable, that is, perpetually untrustworthy? If not, then explain where this changes.

Finally, the only school of criminology that relies on the concept of a criminal mind even vaguely is trait theory, which only does so in that it relies on things internal to the criminal, but it is about the effects of childhood development, not the idea that some people are "inherently thieves" which is not part of criminology at all. Please either clarify that you are not talking about the term "criminal mind" as everybody else uses it or that sociological theories of crime are actually endorsements of the colloquial "criminal mind". Both will be equally entertaining.

Root cause? I assume it was cause he was drunk, had stolen stuff before and gotten a light sentence so he thought 'Fuck, why not? I'll just get a slap on the wrist when the cops get here, in the meantime, I'll be enjoying my buzz, drinking my soda.'

Ah, yes, we can always assume that things are in such a way as to justify the course that we have already decided on, framing things so that excessive punishments become seen as the only way, but this is hardly rational, and I don't see why I should give this any credence or assume that the best way to prevent further offenses is to invoke the full consequences of a felony conviction.

Cool, I'm glad that my provocation worked. You've been reduced to shrieking about how most criminals can't be rehabilitated. Well, to put it bluntly, this explains where your priority lies. You don't give a damn whether people stop committing crimes, because in that case the only alternatives are rehabilitation or death, as these are the only means to stop crimes from recurring. So thank you for demonstrating that the primary concern is the authority of the state- that is, ensuring whether people are punished, rather than whether the problem is stopped.

You can rant about how I'm an idiot dreamer while demanding that nobody say anything mean about you ever, but at least I believe that the goals of a criminal justice system should be to prevent crimes, ensure redress for crimes, and prevent further crimes, whereas with your statements you have revealed that the only part you care about is the second, and you view it to be the sole important part of the justice system. Whining about cost only reinforces this- you believe that the priority is reassuring people of the power of the state through punishment, rather than treating the causes of crimes, for an astounding reason.

In fact, by insisting that some crimes may not have treatments, we get to the root- I believe that all actions have causes, and you do not. In order for crimes to not be treatable, they must not have causes, because if they have causes, the causes can be interrupted or altered and the crime thus treated.

I think I'll continue with this methodology, because it is enlightening and entertaining to watch you become so invested in this you insist that there is such a thing as an effect without a cause rather than agree with me because I said mean things about you (PS: your mother thinks you're boring). Even admitting that I'm doing this probably won't prompt you to calm down and return to reasonable discourse, so I might as well enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. So in that sense, I don't think that, when calm, you really would end up agreeing with the statements you've made, but I can only guess because I doubt your pride (it's not a stretch to assume that someone has some degree of pride that would be infringed by publicly admitting they were wrong and said some very silly things, frankly) is up to confirmation one way or the other. I doubt mine would be in your position.

[Bakustra]

You know, if this guy was drunk, then why are we charging him like he was in his right mind? We don't accept drunken consent as full consent, we don't treat drunken statements like they were sober statements- oh, wait, he has a record of petty thefts in an unknown context, so he has to be a compulsive criminal who nevertheless has nothing wrong psychologically with him. Good to know that that's resolved for all time and across all of society.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Hey, Baku, I'm going to get hammered and come over to your house and make a sandwich without permission, then get belligerent when you ask me to leave. That'd be cool, right? Because I'd be drunk at the time, and therefore not in my right mind. I'd never do anything like that sober, so you shouldn't call the cops and I shouldn't be charged with tresspassing and theft, right?

[Bakustra]

Hey, Baku, I'm going to get hammered and come over to your house and make a sandwich without permission, then get belligerent when you ask me to leave. That'd be cool, right? Because I'd be drunk at the time, and therefore not in my right mind. I'd never do anything like that sober, so you shouldn't call the cops and I shouldn't be charged with tresspassing and theft, right?

It's really awesome that you don't understand my point and yet try to address it. But actually, I'd probably beat you to death for the crime of smarminess and using a nickname I don't approve of, following a summary judgment by the court of myself. (EDIT: If you think this is serious, [I mean, "using a nickname I don't approve of] you have a problem that needs some help.) I am legally my own country, as far as you know, so therefore it's cool because it's the law, right? This has exactly as much to do with what you're saying as what you're saying has to do with what I'm saying. A hint, since you seem to be a little slow on the uptake and belligerent (probably you should be charged with trespassing and theft and convicted and sent to jail for the rest of your life for that horrible, horrible crime): I have never endorsed the idea that theft should be acceptable, so that is one area on which your analogy fails. Try and find the other ones!

[Grumman]

Here, I'm going to sum this up instead of writing unwieldy, welded-together posts:

I believe that this doesn't address the root cause of why this guy stole a soda, and that the consequences of the current justice system mean inhumane results for this guy, and that a better system would focus on causes and addressing them instead of punishments and expanding them. Also, the term "criminal mind" is meaningless and believing that it is a useful term is a warning sign of being a complete fucker.

The root cause is that the man wanted a soda, and lacks any of the usual restraints that would stop him stealing things he wants.

If he had enough respect for his fellow man to not take their stuff without permission, he would not have stolen the soda.
If he had learnt by rote from his parents or his religion that he shouldn't steal, he would not have stolen the soda.
If he was afraid of what would happen to him if he stole the soda, he would not have stolen the soda.
If he knew and cared that he'd be worse off if he stole the soda, he would not have stolen the soda.

Any of these things would have stopped him from ever becoming a criminal. If you want to redeem a criminal, you have to impose one of these restraints upon them, such that they will become a law abiding citizen. Otherwise, you're left with the last option:

If he was rendered physically incapable of stealing the soda, he would not have stolen the soda.

You know, if this guy was drunk, then why are we charging him like he was in his right mind? We don't accept drunken consent as full consent, we don't treat drunken statements like they were sober statements- oh, wait, he has a record of petty thefts in an unknown context, so he has to be a compulsive criminal who nevertheless has nothing wrong psychologically with him. Good to know that that's resolved for all time and across all of society.

He is - if not compulsively committing crimes - deliberately putting himself into a state of mind where he will compulsively commit crimes. If you know that drinking alcohol makes you stupid enough to drive while intoxicated and potentially kill someone, you have a moral obligation to not make yourself that stupid.

[Vendetta]

Your method would set a new societal standard that petty theft is acceptable. It would lead to a massive increase in petty theft, because quite a few people would say "well, if all that happens is that I get escorted off the property, I guess It's not a crime."

Well shit, if only there were a range of possible penalties for things like petty theft in between "a stern talking to" and "Five years in prison".

Being escorted off the premesis and spot fined $20 for your $1 soda, for instance (with the cost of the theft recompensed to the victim).

And the thing is, it really doesn't matter how many times someone does it if there is a sensible penalty in place. If people really want to keep paying twenty times the cost of things they get caught pinching, they're welcome to do so. Having a scale of penalties that ends up woefully disproportionate and expensive to enforce for petty theft probably doesn't deter it all that much, because I suggest that most people do things like this because they don't think the chances of getting caught are high enough to worry about.

[Akhlut]

Which is the greater social cost? The loss of thousands of dollars a year (at the top end) for a corporation that had a net income of 5 billion dollars a year (making this literally a drop in the fucking bucket), or the expenditure of police time, court time, employee time, and the like, all just to take a petty thief and render him or her unable to find more than marginal employment with felony charges on their record? I bet that the actual loss to the economy is greater than that from a hundred such people

Actually tax GE and the other hundreds of corporations making literally billions of dollars in profits and stop them from receiving billions of tax dollars from the government and the court system will suddenly have more money than it would ever need for processing thieves.

Also, taxing various Wall Street and other banking activities, in addition to regulating the shit out of financial activities, would keep the economy from being destroyed by a bunch of hypergreedy sociopaths. Thus, it wouldn't harm the economy in any great manner while spending the public dollar on prosecuting petty thieves.

Problem solved. :v

You know, if this guy was drunk, then why are we charging him like he was in his right mind? We don't accept drunken consent as full consent, we don't treat drunken statements like they were sober statements- oh, wait, he has a record of petty thefts in an unknown context, so he has to be a compulsive criminal who nevertheless has nothing wrong psychologically with him. Good to know that that's resolved for all time and across all of society.

Because of the ways in which people are harmed. A drunken statement to the police is not necessarily accurate (and thus can cause harm to innocent people), drunken consent to sex can be harmful to the one giving consent, whereas drunken driving disproportionately hurts other people and drunken belligerence harms people who otherwise would not likely be harmed by the intoxicated person if s/he weren't, you know, intoxicated.

Do you or do you not admit that this is saying, via implication, that thieves are, a priori, irredeemable, that is, perpetually untrustworthy? If not, then explain where this changes.

Well, there is some strong evidence that recidivism is fairly high in industrialized nations, with even Norway and its strong emphasis on rehabilitation having a rate approaching 50%. That would make it a risky proposition for a company to hire a known felon without some sort of restitution plan/insurance in place. That doesn't mean rehabilitation shouldn't be attempted (and it does mean that rehabilitation can be successful roughly half the time), but it does show there is still a significant risk associated with hiring felons. (source, source, source)

Ah, yes, we can always assume that things are in such a way as to justify the course that we have already decided on, framing things so that excessive punishments become seen as the only way, but this is hardly rational, and I don't see why I should give this any credence or assume that the best way to prevent further offenses is to invoke the full consequences of a felony conviction.

What about all the times he was already arrested and convicted but not sent to jail, which didn't seem to stop him from committing petty theft? Perhaps escalation of punishment will put him on the straight and narrow while lesser punitive (and perhaps rehabilitative) measures did not or could not.

You can rant about how I'm an idiot dreamer while demanding that nobody say anything mean about you ever, but at least I believe that the goals of a criminal justice system should be to prevent crimes, ensure redress for crimes, and prevent further crimes, whereas with your statements you have revealed that the only part you care about is the second, and you view it to be the sole important part of the justice system. Whining about cost only reinforces this- you believe that the priority is reassuring people of the power of the state through punishment, rather than treating the causes of crimes, for an astounding reason.

Given that you stated that the criminal justice system should be used for the prevention of crimes, and knowing that recidivism rates (especially for repeat offenders) are extremely high, do you then support using capital punishment on repeat offenders? Even nations focusing on rehabilitative measures see high rates of recidivism, after all.

[Simon_Jester]

Isn't petty theft one of those crimes that is mostly likely to affect ordinary people more than it affects large corporations? Some crimes are like that. Think about armed robbery; sure, sometimes someone robs a bank, but most robberies are of private homes and small businesses, and the people who get shot in them are usually clerks, not CEOs.

If you're looking at the social justice angle, remember that the risk of being a victim of street crime is one of the things that goes with low socioeconomic status. Rich people and (often) the businesses that serve them can afford to have more private guards and security systems to deter street crime; regular Joes have to rely on the police entirely, so a small-time criminal is more likely to get caught preying on the rich than on the poor.

[Aaron MkII]

Someone asked earlier about alternatives:

Fines, community service. No need to toss him in jail.

Ok, I agree with that, the first couple times. My problem comes in where it's repeated offenses, he's been given chances to change, and still doesn't. At some point you have to hold people accountable for their actions in an escalating manner. Maybe increased fines for each offense would work, maybe it wouldn't. Community service doesn't, because at least some of the time the groups assigned to oversee the person will sign off for an 8 hour day after half an hour of work (personal experience there, volunteered for community service so I didn't have to pay court costs on a speeding ticket.)

Vendetta answered this quite well I think.

[Civil War Man]

Having a scale of penalties that ends up woefully disproportionate and expensive to enforce for petty theft probably doesn't deter it all that much, because I suggest that most people do things like this because they don't think the chances of getting caught are high enough to worry about.

This is actually similar to one of the arguments I see against using the death penalty as a deterrent. It's not going to deter someone who's insane because they are insane. It's not going to stop a crime of passion because the crime is already done before the perpetrator starts thinking of the consequences. And it's not going to stop a premeditated crime because when the crime is planned, the perpetrator plans on ways to avoid getting caught, and so they believe they will get away with it.

[Simon_Jester]

How well does that argument hold in the extreme limiting case? Would it make sense to just... stop punishing criminals at all?

I find that hard to believe, because in practice crime is rampant under conditions of anarchy. Not so much within small tribe-like communities, those self-police, but in any larger setting you get widespread theft and murder, often semi-formalized as feuds and raiding.

Obviously there's such a thing as punishing criminals too much. Past some point they either go into denial about the possibility of getting caught or reason that they might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. But can you punish criminals too little?

Don't we often argue that this is a problem in things like class-action lawsuits and fines levied against corporations, that the punishment is so small that the offender has every reason to just write it off and commit the same crime over again? If it's true for large corporations, why wouldn't it be true for individuals? If Polluteco can write off a million dollar fine as an occasional cost of doing an otherwise profitable business, why wouldn't I write off a twenty dollar fine the same way?