Because one idea is that they have to feed their children. It’s an urgent, desperate need. They are not doing it for fun, they don’t want to be criminals.
Well, it is easy to explain stealing a bag of beans to a judge, and most of all, to the starving children at home, than justifying waiting for a train, cutting the lock, getting the luxury Louis Vuitton sunglasses, bringing them home, putting them up for sale on Craigslist and waiting for offers, so then, they can finally go to the store and buy the bag of beans.
The story of feeding hungry kids doesn’t work as well in the later case.
I see people mentioning children the same way people say children when talking about surveillance. It’s usually a tool for sympathy rather than real motive.
I also have my personal experience noticing how a good number of people I knew thoroughly enjoyed the rush and the excitement of it. I couldn’t think of many who ever said they had no choice, had children to feed, but rather they would go on about how they hid from the cops, sold the stuff, such and such was stupid to get caught, etc.
I would like to believe everyone is kind and nice and doesn’t want to do those things, the reality I have been through doesn’t support it at all, sadly.
What's odd is you have people who are very ideological and dogmatic and refuse to believe this is the case. They don't see themselves becoming thieves just because, so therefore no one else would do such a thing.
But look, do people have to be in the mob? Is it risky to be in the mob? Do they not have any other options? Yet, people get in to the mob. It's not lucrative. They could get regular jobs, but no, they like the atmosphere --well, that was years ago before the feds pretty much put a lid on it.
Pragmatically - You have to steal fewer items with less security, so less risk of getting caught. It's lighter to move. You can use that money for clothing or rent. You can use that money to buy a lot more food.
Meanwhile, it seems as trivial to justify to a judge. You needed food, so you stole something to get food. Certainly, I consider it to be at least as moral as stealing the food directly, so I don't understand why it would be harder to justify. Unless your contending that stealing beans is obviously for feeding kids, but stealing a bag isn't? That is, you're asking for leniency and not debating morals. In which case I would ask you if motive matters to a judge or if that means your kids are more likely to get taken away or can you not get the same effect by just keeping better records? Receipts of how your spent the bag money.
Where do we have data that that is happening?
I don’t think we need more mandatory sentences or stricter laws, but simply turning the other way and not punishing this kind of behavior is also going to backfire. There has to be a balance.
I suspect it’s all designed to artificially reduce the crime stats (“if we don’t process or book them no crime was committed”) while at the same time getting extra points for social justice. Two birds with one stone.