Hey progressives: Shoplifting isnt need, its just plain greed

Outside Manhattan Criminal Court last week, Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher called the scourge of shoplifting that’s set in over the past decade the result of “crimes of poverty, people who are stealing things like toothpaste ..

.And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”It’s hard to know which would be worse: that Gallagher isn’t aware that shoplifting is a gang-led, bulk-fencing scheme that costs jobs and that can escalate to deadly violence — or that she doesn’t care.The criminals responsible for a disproportionate percentage of New York City retail theft aren’t driven by hunger (or by a desire for clean teeth).They are repeat actors — people who steal and sell stolen goods for a living, or people who steal to support drug habits.As The New York Times reported in 2023, just 327 people in 2022 were responsible for almost one in three city shoplifting arrests, with some “engage[d] in shoplifting as a trade,” and others “driven by addiction or mental illness.”Criminal rings help small-scale thieves resell their goods — at pawn shops, at bodegas and online.In 2023, The New Yorker profiled a beneficiary of New York’s supportive-housing network, who resold stolen goods online to make a little extra cash.That’s common: Open-air markets around the city regularly feature stolen toiletries for sale.Even as the most violent crimes in New York City have abated in the past few years after their post-2020 surge, theft remains much higher than a decade ago.This year’s tally of reported petit larcenies — 60,003 through early August — is 5% below last year’s, yes.But it remains close to a quarter higher than the norm between the early 2000s and 2017 — that is, before New York state changed its criminal-justice laws, particularly around evidence production and cash bail, to make it harder to incapacitate repeat thieves.That’s partly because people who shoplift don’t go to jail: fewer than nine percent ...