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In this episode, an authoritarian and some anarchist(s) have an unhinged conversation about policing.
Participants: Yassine, Kulak, & Hoffmeister25 [Note: the latter's voice has been modified to protect him from the progressive nanny state's enforcement agents.]
Links:
About the Daniel Penny Situation (Hoffmeister25)
Posse comitatus (Wikipedia)
Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (BJS 1997)
The Iron Rule (Anarchonomicon)
Eleven Magic Words (Yassine Meskhout)
Blackstone's ratio (Wikipedia)
Halfway To Prison Abolition (Yassine Meskhout)
Defunding My Mistake (Yassine Meskhout)
Recorded 2023-09-16 | Uploaded 2023-09-25
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Notes -
Like where? What did they do that was so successful?
Some of Ireland's city centres have a very visible heroin problem. This does cause shoplifting, I saw a lot of it myself working in a shop next to a courthouse, a homeless shelter and some gypsy families, but for whatever reason there are far less security measures in supermarkets and the like than I've seen in most other countries I've been to. I don't know what makes Ireland different, though from personal experience the police are fairly vigilant if you can show them evidence of a repeat shoplifter.
Maybe we're at the tipping point and we'll soon join everyone else in having security guards randomly check your bags or having to scan a receipt to leave the self-checkout, but I found it extremely odd when I was expected to do that abroad.
I assume there's a sort of collective action problem but in "reverse", sort of. There are souls brave enough (and thirsty enough for their next hit) to push the envelope in daring heists, and as soon as they demonstrate their effectiveness others would inevitably copy them. For example, videos of organized retail thefts where a dozen or so people loot a store all at once very likely encourages others to do the same, because it's demonstrated as a plainly effective tactic.
People are also very crafty about their hustles and shift accordingly. For example, brand name laundry detergent was a very popular piece of contraband recently in the US because it was relatively expensive, relatively compact, and very easy to unload for cash to damn near anyone.
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I'm not going to be able to rattle off comparative statistics or speak with deep knowledge about the differences in policy approach, but for example Mount Gambier in South Australia often gets referred to as "Meth Gambier", yet shops don't lock up items on their shelves.
If I had to guess, I'd hazard that the key difference is that property crime is prosecuted and punished more vigorously. But I don't actually know.
It seems to me that it's mostly the international norm in western countries though. Just about everywhere seems to have drug problems. Few seem to have such severe property crime issues that stores need to lock up items - I've only seen that when I've visited America.
Edit: Dumb question, but is specific deterrence a sentencing factor in America?
I don't know enough about Australia but wherever there are drug addicts, you have to figure out how they pay for their habit. If not stealing, then how else are they making money? Generally speaking their ability to hold down a job tends to be compromised by their habitual drug use. So, how are they paying for their drugs? The only hustles I'm generally aware of are panhandling (very limited), financial fraud (very ineffective), shoplifting, burgling, sex work, and various salvage jobs (including cutting catalytic converters).
By specific deterrence you mean deterring the individual involved? Yes that's an omnipresent sentencing factor.
Ah, this might be a relevant policy difference. The answer here is "Centrelink".
US unemployment benefits are temporary, and thus unavailable to the chronically jobless. Our system is kind of cumbersome and annoying, but does allow the perpetually unemployed to get free money for life. Not a lot of money mind you, but enough that you can afford some drugs if you choose to forgo normal expenses like rent.
I also feel like shoplifting for resale is just not done here? I don't know if that's a misperception on my part, but my impression is that pretty much all the shoplifting that occurs here is people taking things that they use themselves, rather than selling it for drug money.
Obviously drug-fueled crimes occur - I knew a former addict who went around door knocking for donations pretending to be working for the Red Cross - and probably some portion of addicts steal food so they can spend their dole on drugs. But overall it seems to be kept to an acceptably low level.
That might be an unstable equilibrium, though.
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Thanks, that's really useful context. So Centrelink acts like a UBI of sorts? The closest the US has is what's referred to as "Social Security Disability Insurance" which also acts like a UBI by giving about $700 in cash a month (TLP wrote about this) plus food stamps which is about $200/month. I've heard from multiple addicts in the US that their opioid habit costs about $100 a day, a figure I still find absolutely unbelievable but I found a national survey that corroborated a range of $60-$100/day. That requires a lot of shoplifting to fund. In my case load, I don't think I've ever encountered a client who was stealing items for their direct needs. The typical scenario is stealing things either to attempt a return fraud ("I lost the receipt") or selling it on craigslist or OfferUp (power tools are not suspicious and sell very quickly).
I imagine there's going to be some variation among countries regarding how expensive the drugs are, how much government money addicts get, and how lucrative the "shadow trades" are.
The big difference is that it diminishes pretty sharply as you start earning your own income. This has some perverse outcomes - e.g. I know part time workers on very low incomes who have turned down more work because the resulting loss of centrelink money + higher tax would basically wipe out their increased income. But it makes it sustainable. And of course there are conditions attached, like you need to apply for a certain number of jobs per week. But there's no rule that your applications need to be any good or take more than the barest modicum of effort. If you stay on it for long enough they make you sit through an online job-finding-advice-course saying things like "Hey, have you considered showering before job interviews?" And of course the money is not great - it's about $375/week (which converts to $240 US).
I'm also not sure of the extent to which the popularity of different drugs matters. The most common drug here (other than pot, which will probably end up getting decriminalised at some point) is meth, which I'm given to understand is substantially cheaper than opioids.
It's quite interesting that you report clients basically never steal for personal use. I did some googling to see if my anecdotal impressions of the situation here were right and found this paper which reports the uses of stolen goods by Australian thieves (figure 2). It confirms my impression that it's overwhelmingly for personal use, with "swap for drugs" coming a distant second, and selling them coming third.
That's a very interesting paper, thanks for linking it. It's an admirable effort though I remain skeptical at their methodology because the source of their information is social workers asking police detainees. I'd imagine that there would be an intense social desirability bias to claim you're just stealing food for personal use rather than say you steal electronics to buy drugs. At the same time, I can't account for why the trends would change (since presumably social desirability bias would be constant).
Here's another data point for you, from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics. They report (table 2) that alcohol is by far the most commonly stolen item, followed by clothing and footwear. More high-value resellable items like personal electronics come 5th and tools and suchlike are way down. This confirms what I've heard from friends and family who have worked in retail that the biggest shoplifting problem is obvious alcoholics swiping booze.
I also found this interesting:
I have no idea what the comparable statistic would be in an American jurisdiction, but I'm willing to bet it would be way way lower.
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