I think (I'm pretty far away from all of this so this is just my impression) the point of these people, often poorly made and sometimes exaggerated, is that petty crimes (especially in a world where everyone is insured anyways so the actual damage is minimal) are not worth ruining human lives over. The American justice system is atrocious, with for profit prisons and extremely high recidivism rates, not to mention racial bias at many levels. Is it worth it to throw away a human life in that black whole over a bottle of wine?

In abstract both arguments (strict enforcement of all laws; and that the system's results are inhumane so lesser laws should be ignored) make surface level sense. A middle ground sounds best (some laws are loosened, leniency is used on first offenses, prison system reform to rehabilitate instead of punish, etc.).

That's not really how insurance works. Everything gets paid for by someone, it's not magic money. A systemic increase in insurance payouts causes a proportional systemic increase in insurance premiums which are ultimately passed onto the customer.

One person is more culpable in the life ruining than the person who contacts the police.

See the wikipedia article to learn what actually happened, the Oberlin statement and the NYT article are misleading:

An employee took a photo of the shoplifter in the act of stealing, the shoplifter got angry and assaulted the employee for this. That's when then the employee tried apprehending the shoplifter.

Assault, not petty theft. Also, doesn't violence turn theft into robbery?

Theft is a crime. It warrants the same response as an assault.

> Is it worth it to throw away a human life in that black whole over a bottle of wine?

Except that's not what happened. The shopkeeper was assaulted and another shopkeeper (a member of their family) also assaulted before they pursued the assailant.

Really is unfortunate, both sides of the political spectrum suffer from this principal agent dilemma. The media finds the craziest instances of the ideology gone to far and everyone believes places like oberlin speak for the left as a whole.

When you look at the situation with shoplifters not being prosecuted in San Francisco I don’t think the perception is too far off. Here in Albuquerque it seems they also have given up on going after people who break into cars or steal them.

I totally agree that the “tough on crime” strategy doesn’t work. But the solution can’t be to let people get away with petty crimes or even make the perpetrators into victims. Law abiding citizens need to be protected.