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I mean, yeah. Boost pay for prosecutors and hire more of them. Same for public defenders. Expand the courts. Give police enough money that they can actually investigate all of the crimes that are reported to them. Make juror compensation $500/day so people will stop trying to get out of it. I don't have any problem with any of this. But that's not the world we live in. the point I was making wasn't that you can't make changes to fix these things, but that the reason for this goes beyond woke prosecutors deciding they don't want to charge shoplifting.
Treating petty offenses (at the discretion of the prosecuter I suppose) more as administrative violations would probably work -- lower the burden of proof (as with traffic tickets), then you can slap tickets on the prolific offenders and jail them when they don't pay up.
Not that anyone in a position to do this would want to, but it would be way cheaper than your idea.
The fact the prosecutors use paper-bag tests to determine who to charge with what is the entire problem in the first place. It would work with low-level law enforcement, though (in fact, there's already a workable model for an entire division of law enforcement to do this job; game wardens as specialized police typically work this way, so does mall security to a point).
But then again, that's just going straight back to Peelian principles (also, obligatory "this is basically just 2nd Amendment by proxy").
The part that could be 'at their discretion' would be whether to charge criminally or not -- so the cops give you a ticket for stealing which you have to pay regardless, and the prosecutor may or may not upgrade to actual charges. Ideally he would do so, but if he doesn't at least there's something. Kind of an additional level on the summary/indictable (Canada) or misdemeanor/felony (US, I think?) ladder.
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So there's an official in ancient Japan, sharp as a tack, a real up-and-comer. He's rapidly making his way up the imperial bureaucracy, and his rivals decide they need to nip him in the bud. The capitol is overrun with pickpockets, has been forever; the crimes are too trivial for serious punishments, and yet no lesser punishments seem to dissuade the criminals. So they decide the thing to do is to give him the job of cleaning up the pickpocket problem, and then when he fails to do so, they can quash his career.
He accepts the job, thinks it over, and issues a new imperial statute: pickpocketing is now legal, provided the pickpockets obtain and carry an official license from the government while plying their vocation. This license is a large placard, five feet tall and two wide, with the word "pickpocket" written on it in large letters visible at a considerable distance. Pickpocketing without a license is now not just pickpocketing, but violation of the imperial law, a crime punishable by death.
The pickpockets examine their options, up-stakes and relocate elsewhere. The official's career proceeds unimpeded.
That just sounds like Discworld's Ankh-Morpork.
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