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The biggest problem is the lack of will to impose the sentence and make it stick. Until the policing and prosecution system are doing that, the sentences don’t matter. What happens right now is that the police come by and take a report. Often, that’s the end of it, there’s a report in a desk drawer somewhere. If you’re lucky the police will do an investigation. If a short investigation leads directly to a suspect or the news media makes them look bad, they’ll arrest someone. Then you go to prosecutors who might prosecute, maybe.
With a system like that, crime, essentially, pays. The 1/25 or so chance that someone arrests you is definitely worth the risk. Especially since in larger cities you need to steal a lot of stuff to reach the felony threshold. In California, you can steal up to $1000 before it’s worth arresting you. In other areas, it’s $500. As long as the TV you’re boosting is on sale for $497, nobody is going to do anything about it. If you and 5-6 buddies go an each boost one of those TVs and sell them, it’s easy money. Drugs are basically not enforced either. People can do them pretty openly on public streets without worrying that the cops are going after them.
While funding plays a role here, the police and prosecutors seem to have lost the spine necessary to do so. I think quite often it’s about the look. You don’t want to be seen as racist for arresting and jailing too many black and Hispanics. You don’t want to look like you’re being mean to poor people. Easy answer is just let them go. Or come up with silly “reforms” that are essentially release but have a service requirement that nobody will actually enforce. If there was one thing I’d do to curb crime it’s to get arrest rates up and prosecute everyone to the full extent. Once it becomes clear that the cops are now back in the crime fighting business, crime should drop.
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