Tar + feather wrote:
1) The best way to make people obey laws is social pressure, not strict enforcement
2) In many cases, enforcing a minor law is more dangerous/expensive than letting it go
3) The punishment for a minor/moderate offense rarely has a positive effect on the criminal's future effect on society
Yes, the basics of modern "criminology" from the safe white castles of the West.
Typically, none of its proponents ever have to live with its consequences.
It's about as dumb as usual European shoulder-shrug when you are robbed: "You have insurance, what do you care?"
Of course, you can't govern a generally loutish people in any case, but indeed, as millennia in almost society known to man have shown:
1) The best way to have (not "make") people respect (not "obey") laws is incentives to do so. Strong punishment is admittedly the most brutish stick. OTOH, carrots (e.g. tax incentives) almost never work except for upper class people, when the whole thing is just a game anyway. The most common thought of a criminal is "can I get away with it?" They generally laugh at wrist-slap punitive responses, which indeed encourage them to do more. Moreover, typically the only "social pressure" they feel is amongst other crooks, hardly a great crowd for inducement.
2) If you are saying that immediate enforcement is dangerous, indeed this is a real worry. But as rojo says, making flight trigger a considerable penalty is a suitable means to discourage it. As for expense for non-immediate enforcement, the deterrent aspect must be included on the other side of the ledger. However, if you're just being petty (e.g. as with Dinesh D'Souza), then obviously everyone agrees it's not worth it. (Some things, like speeding tickets, are essentially simply a money-making operation nowadays with little deterrent effect, which is another mostly modern twist). With the specific example of shoplifting, almost every study has shown that vigorous prosecution by companies is a net gain, largely because those which don't pursue the matter quickly become known to the crooks. There's also the divergence between the "casual" shoplifter (estimated at about 10% of people at sometime in their life), and the "professional" ones, who usually work in teams and/or have an inside contact. But in any case, the word *does* get out (and fast, usually).
3) On the other hand, letting criminals go unpunished has no positive effect on society at all. It is true that the modern catalogue of punishments (particularly imprisonment) rarely have good effects, but that's largely because modern pseudo-thinkers have taken away various punishment classes as inhumane and/or unusual. Something like "community service" is still seen, but doesn't exactly correspond to theft too well. Some sort of individualised restitution is likely to be derided as slavish. IMO it's only a "no-win" situation because of the pecadillos of the modern criminal justice system, not for any real constitutive reason.