Golden Times For Property Crimes

According to Islamic Sharia law,  theft is punishable by amputation of the hand, and “highway robbery” is punished by amputation of the hand and foot ( regardless if the amount of stolen items was under $950 or over $950 ). In those countries where Sharia law is strictly applied, property crime rates are very low because would-be criminals are terrified of the consequences of getting caught. 

According to California Proposition 47, shoplifting for the amount of under $950 became a misdemeanor punishable by up to 6 months in jail, but in practice perhaps only punishable by a few days in jail and some probation. 

If California Penal Code 487 PC “wobbler” is charged as a grand theft misdemeanor then the penalty is up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $1000. If you are convicted of a felony grand theft, then the sentence is up to 3 years of state prison and a maximum $10,000 fine.

In practice, incarceration is minimized with an official explanation of overcrowding in jails, good behavior, first-time offenses, and other “mitigating “ circumstances.

Today in California, it’s golden times for property crime – it is rampant because thieves and robbers do not fear the consequences of getting caught due to very soft penalties.   Even getting caught is far from guaranteed with limited police resources stretched thin to go after many violent crimes that are also widespread.

Smash-and-grab robberies in broad daylight, residential burglaries, armed robberies, shoplifting, fraud, and embezzlement are so common that they make up the lion’s share of the local news. 

Soft on crime experimental policies of California leaders and chief LA prosecutor George Gascon with emphasis on rehabilitation, questionable investment into some shady organizations like BLM and others that pretend to serve communities of color but stood behind 2020 riots, refusal to charge minors as adults for gruesome violent crimes, refusal to pursue the death penalty, closing down prisons, and reducing mass incarceration led to an unprecedented increase in all kinds of crime, but especially property crime. 

How did this happen in the first place?

WRONG PHILOSOPHY BEHIND SOFT ON CRIME POLICIES

It always starts with wrong ideas by naïve and/or emotionally twisted intellectuals who sympathize more with the criminals than with their victims.

First of all, there is this poisonous idea that property crime is somehow less egregious, less damaging, and less dangerous than a violent crime – there is more respect for life than for property so killing a thief or a burglar is only tolerated if it’s done in self-defense not in defense of property.

Then there is the idea that victims’ right to punish a criminal the way victims see fit for a crime committed is medieval and backward, that punishing a criminal for the purpose of delivering justice to a victim is not the top priority.  If there is any emphasis on enforcement it’s focused mainly on deterrence not so much on retribution and that is part of the problem. Victims should have a right for retaliation, and retribution for what criminals had done to them or their loved ones and that should be no less of a priority than deterrence! 

Soft-on crime champions also believe in a sick version of humanism where they say that both criminals and victims are equally human, so despite terrible behavior, a criminal should somehow be entitled to the same human rights that a law-abiding victim is entitled to.

When one listens to KCRW, NPR, or watches mainstream media – all one can hear about is the evils of mass incarceration,  its disproportionate impact on communities of color, police brutality against black and brown, terrible conditions in prisons, and cruelty of death penalty.

What you will NOT hear are detailed descriptions of how some criminals of color killed, robbed, or brutally assaulted members of the community of a different color – i.e. black ghetto criminals attacking Asians, Whites, and Latinos (especially undocumented)!  What you won’t hear on mainstream media is black victims of crime wanting the death penalty for black criminals and supporting police instead of seeking to defund it; you won’t hear the heartbreaking stories from victims who never got their justice because George Gascon and the like declined to seek the death penalty or charge a minor as an adult for a horrible crime.

It’s an upside-down universe when it comes to violent crime. 

As to property crimes, they are not even being discussed at all, they are being treated more like a moral transgression and being excused as an unfortunate consequence of growing up in the inner city and not knowing any better. 

EXCUSES FOR PROPERTY CRIMES

Prosecutors tend to differentiate between non-violent property crimes and violent crimes.

There is a wrong consensus that somehow property crimes that are not violent should not be prosecuted as harshly as any violent crimes.

Embezzlement and grand theft, regardless of the amount is not a priority for life sentences or long prison terms – only most violent crimes are.  Also, violent robbery is still given lower priority for prosecution than rape, murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and domestic violence. The truth is:  if you look at the economic and emotional impact of widespread property crime it by far exceeds the impact of violent crime on the daily lives of ordinary citizens and non-citizens.  

Thefts, shoplifting, embezzlement, fraud, and burglaries when no one is home are far more common than murders or even violent street robberies or smash-and-grab heists against luxury stores.

“Non-violent” property crime affects  A LOT MORE PEOPLE than violent crime. Also, the economic losses from non-violent property crime by far exceed economic losses from murders or street robberies, especially when it comes to systematic embezzlement, corruption, burglaries, and shoplifting.

This doesn’t mean that we should now start prioritizing property crime prosecution over violent crime prosecution but what this means is that we need to start prosecuting BOTH violent and non-violent property crime in an equally harsh manner.

As a society we should not be excusing property crime by comparing it to violent crime; the impact of losing property may not feel dramatic to the outside observer but it’s a lot more painful to the owner of the property than the murder of some stranger in a crime-infested neighborhood! 

Victims of property crime feel very strongly about perpetrators and are willing to cut off hands and feet if given a chance – and this should be the guiding principle of dealing with property crimes – victims’ wishes.  Of course, non-profit lawyers and liberal judges will jump on this saying that cutting off hands and feet is a cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Constitution, but somehow death penalty is not.  In any case, for the time being, we could stick to life in prison for smash-and-grab robberies and residential burglaries,  and minimum of 10-year sentences for shoplifting and theft, and a minimum of 20 years sentences for embezzlement. This may be enough to deter future criminals seeking to take the property of another without their consent. 

There is also this naïve and dangerous belief in alternatives to incarceration like youth counseling,  rehabilitation of recidivists, giving second chances to first-time offenders, giving a pass to minors believing that they somehow didn’t understand the gravity of what they were doing, early release on probation and attempts to find employment for a hardcore felon who should spend the rest of his life in prison, etc. Naturally, those who come out early on probation, violate it and commit more crimes, those who were given a new job steal from their new employer, and those who were told to go to counseling or take classes instead of sitting in jail, skip those classes to commit new crimes etc.  After our “humane” governor released 70,000 criminals into our communities early in 2020 under COVID-19 pretext, they immediately returned to their careers as robbers and thieves and made up a large share of looters during BLM-inspired riots.    

Forgiveness should only be the province of victims who are the only ones who have a moral right to forgive. A humane approach to those who do not deserve to be treated humanely based on what they’ve done to their victims is wrong.  This applies to all crimes, violent and non-violent.  It is this theory of humane alternatives that brought the criminal justice system to its knees and turned it into a system of injustice for victims and for society.  All these alternatives only led to more crime, more victims, more bitterness and aggravation, more injustice for victims, and a general state of paranoid anxiety among the population.

In order to stop property crime, we need to change politicians, prosecutors, and judges to those with different tough-on-crime philosophy that focuses on victims’ rights and law-abiding citizens’ safety, not humane treatment of criminals. We need to vastly expand the prison system including private prisons to house a much greater number of inmates. 

Of course, many pro-criminal advocates will hide behind saying that we can not afford tough-on-crime reforms because our budget is limited and we can only afford the current number of police officers, prosecutors, and current number of beds in prisons and can not afford to hire more police officers and building more prisons. To this, our society should respond by demonstrating that economic losses from property crimes by far exceed whatever extra expenditures would be needed to catch and imprison thieves, robbers, burglars, fraudsters, and embezzlers.

Also, to save costs, inmates should be required to work for free in manufacturing to sell goods they produce and use the proceeds for prison personnel and maintenance.  Whatever property criminals own should be confiscated to help pay for their upkeep in prison, prison conditions should turn from a free resort into an overcrowded torture chamber with poor living conditions which will make the prospect of going to prison even less attractive than it is now.

PERSONAL EXCUSES – WRONG MENTALITY

Somehow most of us regardless of our social status, understand from early childhood that stealing, robbing, embezzling, and committing fraud are not only illegal but morally wrong so even if we don’t get caught, we will lose self-respect if we commit any of such wrongdoing – and will feel guilty. Individuals committing property crimes also know full well that what they are doing is morally wrong, but they are still doing it and coming up with a multitude of excuses.

The following are the excuses for property crime that are coming from the perpetrators. 

 If they feel safe talking about why they did it, its usually several typical justifications: 

1)“I was young and got mixed up with the wrong crowd”; 

2) “ I was poor, destitute, and hungry”; 

3) “It was just one beer bottle / one t-shirt for my little kid  I couldn’t afford to buy”  ; 

4) “Stealing from Target, a big corporation is a victimless crime – they are so rich, they can replace the merchandise easily”; 

5) “ that business made it too easy to steal because they are dealing with cash all the time and its human nature to take something that is too available for being taken in plain view without any safeguards” or even 

6) “Until there is inequality in society, we have a right to steal from the rich because they enriched themselves at our ancestors’ expense” or some basic stuff like 

7) “Kleptomania”  “decease”!  Whatever the excuse, almost no one accepts personal responsibility!  

CONSEQUENCES OF PROPERTY CRIME EPIDEMIC

As a result of the property crime epidemic, and lack of enforcement against thieves, embezzlers, burglars, and robbers, no one can feel safe regardless of social status or the area where the victim lives.

Undocumented migrants in impoverished inner cities don’t wear expensive watches but are still getting robbed on a daily basis simply getting gas at gas stations or buying groceries even if the cash they carry is less than $100.

Burglaries happened in all neighborhoods and people lost peace of mind even in their own homes. Some install cameras only to watch helplessly from a distance how burglars get into their houses and police don’t come until the next day and rarely follow through with the investigation and prosecution of those burglars turns into a mockery of justice for the victims.

Employers who operate with cash have to treat their employees as potential criminals to avoid workplace theft, and those who don’t operate with cash have to be paranoid about all financial transactions between customers and employees or business partners because everyone knows they can get away with stealing without going to prison long term or having their hand amputated.

Major shopping centers can’t rely on security guards because security guards can do nothing against a crowd of 100 or more smash-and-grab masked teenagers storming the store en masse and grabbing “less than $950” items from the shelves. If security guards armed with AR-15s were allowed to shoot the shoplifters and especially looters and smash and grab robbers with many rounds of live ammunition, this would not be happening!

COMPREHENSIVE REMEDIES TO PROPERTY CRIME

Along with exponential increase in penalties and expansion of law enforcement resources and prison system, there needs to be some kind of early detection and crime prevention system which would include enhanced police state features. This would include but not be limited to total surveillance in public areas and residential neighborhoods, armed vigilante units that would augment police force in residential neighborhoods,  registration of first-time offenders’ residences, and monitoring of their movement with special monitoring device bracelets that they must wear at all times, expansion of private security authority to shoot smash and grab robbers or shoplifters on the scene.

Also, second amendment rights play a big role in deterring criminals – for law-abiding mentally stable adult individuals it should be easy to obtain assault weapons and carry them in public which would certainly deter both violent and non-violent criminals. 

Of course, the education system must play some role as well – even if children are neglected by dysfunctional parents, schools can try to teach them right from wrong, instill respect for private property, compassion for victims of crime and hatred for criminals etc. Rather than listening to rap music glorifying criminality and being taught that “systemic racism” somehow excuses disobedience to police or plain robbery, teenagers should be reeducated to resent this type of entertainment and woke ideology that contributes to criminality in the first place.

If all the above measures are taken despite fierce resistance from fake humanists, property crime will become a relic of the past and we will live much happier lives by being able to focus on personal growth instead of personal safety.