The “crime panic” was a myth. But an analysis by The Appeal shows the narrative helped local police buy facial recognition software, drones, license plate readers, social media surveillance tech, and more.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 days ago

    $1200 is when it becomes a felony (at least where you are it seems). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some stores’ loss prevention didn’t physically stop a person until they know they’ve hit that threshold. Most stores won’t stop people at all for liability reasons, so maybe they start taking it more seriously when it hits the felony threshold.

    Maybe local police don’t want them to call them every time there’s a misdemeanor level shoplifting, because who fucking cares.

    The prison system makes money off those people going to jail. The largest private prison company is from here. “But the News said!”

    Prison and jail are two different things. If it’s about private prisons making money, then it would make sense to go for felonies over misdemeanors. You generally don’t go to prison for misdemeanor shoplifting so nobody is making money in that case.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      $1000 is a felony here. And less than that is up to a year in jail and $2500 fine.

      No they aren’t going to physically stop you, they are going to call the police, and report your tags and report your face.

      Yes jail and prison are different. People wind up on probation for stealing less than $50 worth of things. Unless everyone is stealing from the place all the time, it is always worth it on their end to report stupid shit like that. Keeps police around their parking lot, which cuts down on more crime. They aren’t going to report everything, but you’re not taking a 65" TV out the front door which is only about $400-500 dollars without getting a call

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 days ago

        I just said it wouldn’t surprise me if they did… Aside from that, I was just arguing that the whole, “they’re going after the small ones too so prisons can make more money” just doesn’t make sense.