Comment by llm_nerd
3 days ago
These are orthogonal. Maybe we should have max enforcement in both? Indeed, seems like separate groups should be enforcing both?
However I suspect it's also an outdated claim. Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded. In the past five years it has increased 100%+ in many areas. It has almost been normalized where some groups will proudly boast about how they've scammed and stole, especially at self checkouts.
I have zero problem with max enforcement. I'm not a thief and if you have a thousand AI cameras tracking my every move through the store, I simply do not care. I also don't see a particularly slippery slope about systems that highlight the frequent thieves. Further I appreciate that retail operates at a pretty thin margin, so every penny they save (both on labour and by catching/preventing thefts) is actually good for law abiding society. So more of it, please.
>Maybe we should have max enforcement in both?
You can't, resources are limited.
>Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded.
I don't know that that's true. Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
https://counciloncj.org/shoplifting-trends-what-you-need-to-...
>You can't, resources are limited.
Regulatory authorities and courts enforce against wage theft. Shoplifting enforcement is mostly up to businesses.
>Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Shoplifting reports to police were down in some cities (albeit up in others), but that doesn't necessarily track the actual data.
https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/shoplifting-inci...
No shoplifting enforcement is done through the courts and most importantly, the police. There is a huge difference here.
Courts incur costs between fees and lawyers, and even filing a report with the dept of labor (the typical recourse most people take at first) means you have to wait while you aren't being compensated for that time. Given wage theft in the majority of cases impacts people who can't often afford to go without those lost wages, this is a tough situation to be in, and even if you go through the labor department with a complaint, manage to get it reviewed in a timely manner (it typically takes months before hearing anything), you may still end up in court anyway depending on a number of factors.
You could sue for the lost wages directly, but again, this becomes an issue of cost, getting the case heard and tried in a timely manner etc. This could drag on for months to years, depending.
On the other hand, if a store sees someone shoplifting, they can and do call the police, and they can and will arrest someone for shoplifting. Its dealt with close to or during the incident occurring. Thats a really big difference in the feedback loop.
Imagine now, that you could call the police when you have a verifiable instance of wage theft, and the person(s) responsible was arrested and you given upfront restitution pending trial. That would be the equivalent of how we treat shoplifting vs wage theft. The differences are not minor, and I imagine they're intentional on behalf of lobbying from business groups.
If business owners or their subordinates were being arrested for wage theft I imagine things would change quickly, but there's such a lag time between actual accountability and the instance of it happening - and even when found guilty they simply pay the back wages plus penalties in the best case scenario, and thats if it gets to the point of either a lawsuit or arbitration on behalf of the labor department - that they have done the calculation that paying incorrect compensation (the most common form of wage theft) is overall costing them less than paying out labor disputes, as with anything that has hefty process attached to it without guaranteed results, it discourages the most vulnerable from engaging with that system even though they would benefit most.
They aren't equivalent, and its disingenuous to see them as such.
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