So the only thing you can achieve by reporting a theft is that someone gets subjected to the US justice system (assuming they do anything at all). It is highly unlikely you get anything back. So you shouldn't do it to recover your goods.
Furthermore, reporting anything to the police has extra consequences:
1) they will investigate, and may find something wrong with you
2) they may report it to other government organizations which may use it in ways you did not anticipate and really don't want (e.g. child services: your house was broken into and is "not livable")
3) just the association, or that the neighborhood sees police officers near/in your house will spread and may have consequences.
There's nothing to gain from using the justice system and everything to lose.
>nothing to gain from using the justice system
Insurance may require the theft to be reported before they cover any claims.
Yes, that's the reason to report.
Another reason not to, if you don't have insurance: creepy cops being creepy at you. Story time:
Walking home with my then-housemate after dinner that involved drinking, we were mugged. Minor violence, lost our wallets.
I called the cops. They wanted to come the next day to do an interview, which I declined, pointing out they weren't going to try to find the wallets, so what's the point? At which point cop starts getting weird, first saying they need their statistics for better funding. I still decline, and he says "Well, we'll send someone anyway" and hangs up.
Sure enough, a cop shows up the next day. I tell him I don't need his services and he starts pressuring me for a report. At this point, I'm pissed and tell him to leave; he makes vague noises about maybe not responding to this block very quickly in the future; I barely manage not to say something really rude that most likely would have escalated things.
My policy now: if I'll probably die anyway, or if it involves enough money that I can't ignore it, I might call the cops. Otherwise I'll take my chances that inviting more shitty people to a shitshow will just turn it worse.
FTP.
If you can reasonable keep control (and that could be a simply having the ability to walk away) then do that instead of calling the police.
Once you call them, you're trusting that they won't turn on you, or take issue with you.
Yeah, seems like I was, in the general case of stolen assets, sorry. My example applies to the more limited case of sale of stolen assets to a buyer, where there's enough conspiracy between seller and buyer, and the buyer is an unpleasant career fence. It happens often enough: there's a specialized network of fences (dealers in stolen goods). Given the efforts the parties make to keep their operation covert, conspiracy is easy for the government to allege. And the civil forfeiture against the money used to buy the goods proceeds without a hitch. Yet the fence is not indicted.It happens at scale, you can be sure that false positives (honest citizens who happen to look bad) get burned too.
So if they actually manage to do that (obviously people don't generally commit crimes because they're swimming in money), then no, this is wrong information.
Given that a working justice system is what seperates capitalism from anarchy, how is this allowed to happen in America?
It’s interesting, since in daily life it seems almost normal.
https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/fees/post-judgement-...
A hyperbolic explanation [1] so I don't have to retype something similar:
> Federal sentences are calculated using the United States Sentencing Guidelines. The guidelines are a very complex set of rules used to calculate a federal sentence based upon the crime charged, the circumstances of the case, and the criminal record of the defendant. Calculating a very simple sentence is like completing a very simple tax return under, say, 1040-EZ; a complex sentence is like completing a tax return for a troubled entity engaged in questionable tax practices. Or, for you old-school geeks, like creating a Runequest character for a friend who is an argumentative rules-lawyer. From the enactment of the guidelines in the 1980s until United States v. Booker in 2005, the guidelines were binding upon federal judges — they had to follow the guidelines unless there were grounds for a "departure," meaning the rare circumstance not contemplated by the guidelines. Guidelines-application litigation was time-consuming, tedious, and generally despised by trial and appellate judges. In 2005, the Supreme Court decided to construe the guidelines as mere recommendations which federal judges must consider, thus avoiding the Constitutional dilemma of the sentencing judge making findings of fact driving the sentence without a jury's input. Now, federal judges calculate and consider guidelines sentences, but make their own determination, taking into account the factors required by federal statute. Appellate courts review trial judges' sentences for "reasonableness," in which adherence to the guidelines is one factor. Sentences within the guidelines are presumed reasonable. Most federal judges tend to issue sentences close to the guidelines; some impose sentences below, but it's rarer to see one impose a sentence above.
[1] excerpted from the much longer and funnier https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
>There is no getting reduced sentences for good behavior
>If he gets 20 years, he has to serve at least 16 by law.
I am assuming that the 4 year difference would be applied in the event of... Good behavior?
It doesn't mention returning what he took... So he steals over 10m and buys a 1.6m house and can only be fined up to $250k? With 20 years in prison, and let's say out in 10 years of good behavior wouldn't that raise his annual income (which is taxed) from $116,000 to north of $1m?