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I am a bit confused by the direction and nature of the relationships you are purposing here. It seems to me that you are saying there is a rise in 'selfishness' because governments 'lost trust', by favoring marginalized demographics. I would assume, based on this, that the increase in selfishness then, would be found in the, non-marginalized, non-favored, demographics, but my vague understanding of the spike in shoplifting is that this is not the case.
I think government action, or often inaction, is probably contributing to the rise in the overtness of these behaviors, but I am not sure the mechanism is any more complicated than, some people will act up if you remove the consequences from their actions.
The system being implemented is a spoils system, and the question to answer is whether it is a result of or a cause of a drop in civic virtue.
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You're right this is not clear, I'll admit to this thought being a little half baked but I want to get it out before I forgot or moved on to other things.
My argument is when governance stop enforcing laws unilaterally and starts responding to perverse incentives, that all parties start switching to self interest over mutual growth. In a game theory matrix, the best but 'unstable' outcome is both the government and constituents do wats best for each other, when one party defects for one reason or another, they both slide to following self interest, creating a more stable or predictable, but significantly less beneficial, environment.
Why do you think governments are selectively enforcing laws? And what are the consequences of the government making these deliberate choices?
Personally I do not really model governments as 'entities' that take action based on some sort of game theoretic rational self interest. Governments seem to be collections of people who are generally following their own individual incentives which can very easily lead to governments doing things that are not really in the interest of the government as a whole, if one was to think of it as an entity.
To the specific question, I think there was a very effective march through the institutions which caused woke/progressive ideas to reach fixation in the university system to such an extent that 90%+ of college graduates to come out of the last 15 years (give or take) are 'true believes' in as much as mid-wits can truly believe anything. One of those true beliefs is that crime is (almost?)totally down stream of societal oppression, and specifically that the criminal justice system is a sort of negative feedback loop that creates and then punishes criminals and that the cruel impositions of the criminal justice system upon the 'criminal class,' is an untenable injustice. I think once enough young professionals filter into the various DA offices of the world who hold these beliefs and similar you eventually get to a point where they are able to coordinate action and push through soft on crime practices based on the idea that contact with the criminal justice system is toxic.
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