It turns out shoplifting isn’t spiraling out of control, but lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes anyway.

It turns out shoplifting isn’t spiraling out of control, but lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes anyway.

Over the last couple of years, it seemed that America was experiencing a shoplifting epidemic. Videos of people brazenly stealing merchandise from retailers often went viral; chains closed some of their stores and cited a rise in theft as the primary reason; and drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens started locking up more of their inventory, including everyday items like toothpaste, soaps, and snacks. Lawmakers from both major parties called for, and in some cases even implemented, more punitive law enforcement policies aimed at bucking the apparent trend.

But evidence of a spike in shoplifting, it turns out, was mostly anecdotal. In fact, there’s little data to suggest that there’s a nationwide problem in need of an immediate response from city councils or state legislatures. Instead, what America seems to be experiencing is less of a shoplifting wave and more of a moral panic.

…

Now, those more forgiving criminal justice policies are at risk, in part because of a perceived trend that appears to have been overblown.

  • 𝔇𝔦𝔬
    585·
    11 months ago

    “Over the last couple of years, it seemed that America was experiencing a shoplifting epidemic.”

    You are, it seems to be obvious to everyone except some of you in your own country.

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
      553·
      11 months ago

      This is the weirdest comment. You aren’t from here, and you ignore the statistics that say otherwise, so you offer neither facts nor anecdotes. But the article is definitely wrong just because? I rarely downvote comments but you’ve earned that ignoble distinction.

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
        35·
        11 months ago

        People who have fallen victim to moral panics frequently get absolutely indignant when told they have fallen victim to a moral panic. Not really different than cults or MLMs, in that regard.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
      251·
      11 months ago

      “Anecdotal evidence was artificially hyped via viral videos amplified by corporations for their own ends to create the perception of a widespread problem that just isn’t supported by fact.”

      B-b-b-but I’ve seen the videos! I don’t live there and have zero evidence, but I’m sure it’s happening just because…well, as previously mentioned….those videos…umm…

      Gtfoh

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      I don’t know if the facts in this article are strictly speaking true or not, but it is definitely written in a weasle-worded manner that is quite off-putting to have to read. e.g., it seems to be cherry-picking what it says vs. does not say. For one thing, despite how corporations have been shown to continually lie about this entire affair - closing down stores that are hundreds of miles away from the sites where the looting happened, while still citing that as their justification; which increases the number, size, and severity of “food deserts” where poor people have greatly reduced access to basic goods & services - yet now we are to take them at their word and use their “data” that they provide to us, over and above the (anecdotal) actual evidence that we have seen with our very own eyes (although…how CURRENT is the latter data? it most definitely was happening during the pandemic, but is it still? I mean yeah probably but how often)?

      And now politicians are likely to come in and “make everything better”, i.e. fuck it all up and make it 10x worse, not “reforming” the situation, nor even “punishing” either the looting transgressors or the corporations that continually lied about it, but instead using it as an excuse to make life more difficult for poor people, even as conservatives not merely do not care but take active glee in the people “getting what they deserve”, again ignoring how it is not the same people receiving the punishment as that did the crime in the first place.

      In any case, news articles were sold yesterday, but this media outlet would like to sell you another story TODAY, so they load it up with all sorts of wording in order to increase “engagement” in order to get you to click on it. Are you angry? Click it and find out more! Conversely though, they do not bother to even attempt to tell a balanced story - probably b/c that would lead to fewer clicks, but also definitely b/c that would take more investment into writing the story in the first place, and they have to continually churn out new content so as to make a quick buck:-(.

      Late-stage capitalism sucks donkey balls.:-( In particular, it sucks how ALL the parties involved are greedily fucking over everyone else - the looters, the corporations lying about it, the politicians swooping in to take advantage, the media churning out their engagement content, and now probably you and me and all of the commenters here not perfectly capturing some tiny nuance of the situation so we all must be spreading “misinformation” to some degree or another (if only there was some place that we could go to find reliable, factual information and analysis! unfortunately, there are very few of those places left… and this article definitely does not seem to be one of them).