Honest question: how do we know that this works? And more importantly, where does incarceration as a deterrent not work (e.g. where are the bounds)? Do you have a source?
Well when they're locked up.. they can't go to walgreens and steal a bucket of tidepods.
Sources: No unfortunately I don't. Most of the articles I've seen on this tend to have a bias against punishment for crime and tend to over inflate "corrupt enforcement". (Rather than to discuss the full situation, statistics and societal cost)
My understanding is that crime is mostly a young person's thing. The older people get the less likely they're to commit crime. Prison as a way of aging people out is effective. At best it can prevent people from falling back with the people who go them in the situation.
This makes sense; younger people tend to be less risk averse. Not sure if “aging people out” is the right solution: people who get out of prison usually have worse prospects than when they go in, so (assuming older people are in fact less likely to commit crime) we’d be trading one social problem for another (health/welfare/homelessness).
Also, from an ethical standpoint, I don’t think I could get behind long incarceration times and strict punishments for petty crimes just to reduce the rate of crime. These are real (young) people with lives that are being upended for some mistakes.
The store has to be able to recuperate the loss there. That means either:
1. Higher prices (and for a region that isn't doing well.. they can't afford it and are pushed futher to steal more to survive)
or
2. The store can't survive in that region (Good bye Target on the south side of chicago.. hello food desert once again..also job losses of people trying to make it legitmately) https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-target-closin...
When you punish someone for shoplifting sufficently enough: That means for the time that they're now occupied they can't shoplift, and others do not see continued shoplifting for them. (This is also how violent crimes work as well..)