I always wonder why we don’t use decoys more. Have seemingly tipsy girls stand waving their phone around for a cab and a cop a few feet hidden away. Then stiff penalty. It’ll make people think twice about whether their “mark” is legit.

Same for bike theft…

Because, at least in some jurisdictions, this is regarded as soliciting illegal behaviour.

Which is just as ridiculous as saying that rape victims solicited illegal behavior by dressing provocatively.

AFAIK, in the US, it's only considered entrapment if the officer (or other actor) explicitly entices you to perform an illegal action.

If they stand there, looking like a drug dealer, and you ask… all good.

If they ask you if you want coke, entrapment.

I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as that, but the gist is "would you have committed the crime regardless of the actor's behavior."

Perhaps phone theft is too petty a crime to make it worth it?

In the 80s and 90s bait cars were ubiquitous in cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_car

I could buy a used car for the price of an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

> Unfortunately these will mostly be cases of the cure being worse than the disease (e.g. panopticon with facial recognition and use of face coverings leading to jail time).

Not necessarily. Even if we didn't catch any more criminals than we do now, you could probably reduce the problem a lot just by making sure the ones we do catch actually go to jail.

>e.g. panopticon with facial recognition and use of face coverings leading to jail time

Yeah. Or the inclusion of accurate GPS trackers in each and every phone, so law enforcement could track them down. That would be truly dystopian!