It turns out shoplifting isn’t spiraling out of control, but lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes anyway.
Over the last couple of years, it seemed that America was experiencing a shoplifting epidemic. Videos of people brazenly stealing merchandise from retailers often went viral; chains closed some of their stores and cited a rise in theft as the primary reason; and drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens started locking up more of their inventory, including everyday items like toothpaste, soaps, and snacks. Lawmakers from both major parties called for, and in some cases even implemented, more punitive law enforcement policies aimed at bucking the apparent trend.
But evidence of a spike in shoplifting, it turns out, was mostly anecdotal. In fact, there’s little data to suggest that there’s a nationwide problem in need of an immediate response from city councils or state legislatures. Instead, what America seems to be experiencing is less of a shoplifting wave and more of a moral panic.
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Now, those more forgiving criminal justice policies are at risk, in part because of a perceived trend that appears to have been overblown.
Yeah, I really fucked up.
The sad part is that I didn’t even know anything about Eric Adams before I wrote that. I just extrapolated from my experience here in Atlanta and made an educated guess. The thing is, when big cities are dominated by Democrats it doesn’t mean everybody’s liberal (let alone leftist). Instead, especially in places with a lot of minorities, it’s that the Republican Party’s bigotry is a deal-breaker so even the conservatives are Democrats, too. So you end up with a mayoral race where everybody’s got a (D) next to their name, but the winner is somebody centrist or even center-right. (Consider how Atlanta’s black mayors have always allied themselves with the rich white business community and how the current one has been pushing hard for Cop City, for instance.)
I also considered how former NYC mayors included people like Giuliani and Bloomberg, and figured that theme likely continued as well.
I did double-check afterwards, and was disappointed to be even more correct than I expected to be.