Target has a fearsome reputation on the internet regarding how far it goes to stop shoplifting. As is commonly told, it is supposed to track repeat small time shoplifters until they have one last theft that puts them over $1000 (or whatever the magic felony amount is) and only then does Target drop the net and get the shoplifter convicted on a felony for the total amount that has been stolen over weeks or months as one charge.
As the story is told, it smells strange to me and creates many, many followup questions in my mind. I think those questions would be answered by reading through a court case. As famous as Target is, I feel like more dedicated online crime news followers would know of the case and how it played out. Can anyone point me at it?
Edit: The tale told here.
Jeez. In that case it wasn’t someone poor just trying to get by, she was running a business. She sold the merchandise.
Does anyone else feel like 3 years is way too lenient? That kind of greedy shit should send the person away for like a decade.
Lol, America has more legal slaves than it did before the civil war and has higher incarceration rate than anywhere and you want to lock someone up for a decade for non-violent property crime where the only victim is a multibillion dollar corporation that she stole less than 100k from.
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/target Here’s records of target having stolen 185 million dollars mostly from the American public, how long do you think anyone was in prison for that? Do you think any penalty there even meaningfully affected any executive or major shareholders life?
OK see maybe you need to go to school and learn how law works. You can’t have punishments vary based on the merit of the victim.
Here it’s Target, a rich company, somewhere else it’s a private citizen being stolen from, or a small family business, or a charity. The punishment as a deterrent needs to be based on the act alone, and not your personal lack of sympathy for the victim.
Sorry but the real world doesn’t treat law the way you seem to think.
What the fuck are you talking about? Stealing from a corporation and stealing from people is absolutely not the same. Corporations are not people I can’t believe we still have to argue this point.
Also of course the law takes the merit of the victim into account. Half of all homicide victims are black but in 75% of executions for homicide the victim was white. And how many of those do you think were homeless or sex workers? Don’t be ridiculous, the law is not applied equally for victims or for defendants. Assaulting a cop, on duty or not is not treated the same as assaulting a BIPOC sex worker. Every goddamn time there’s a mass shooting or another cop kills another black person why is the first thing they do to try to find some evidence of dirt on the victims regardless of the relevance to the actual case. You are living in a dream world.
Also… What the hell are you coming at me for about this? I never even argued the ACTUAL SENTENCING was unreasonable?!? (I think it’s unjust, but not unreasonable, but I said nothing of that in my comment). I just thought it was batshit insane that you were out for blood for this person and felt they should go away for half a fucking generation for “grand shoplifting”
You are arguing from an emotional perspective, and also bulldozing in a handful of unrelated topics that you clearly need to rant about. I am not saying I necessarily disagree with you on the specifics, but I was commenting purely from a legal reasoning standpoint. That is a very specific and distinctive principle, or I should say, set thereof. I have heard your type of argument a thousand times, and I am not saying you are WRONG, but I am saying you are not speaking in terms of law, but that of emotional reaction.
It’s fine, I don’t want to argue with you… My initial comment was one kind of discussion, and you’re arguing an entirely different kind.