That people commit shop-lifting and other minor crimes with impunity is a right-wing meme that has very little basis in reality. It's being pushed by grifters with a financial interest in promoting the idea of societal decay and disorder and getting people worked up and afraid.
You have data showing decreasing prosecution rates for such crimes, or is this selective reporting of what a few DAs (of the many thousands in this country) said?
So if you're being held up at gunpoint, what's going to be your response? "Well ackshually the chances of being robbed is less than 0.1% per year, so the idea that I'm being victimized is a right-wing meme that has very little basis in reality"? The fact that DAs in Mississippi are oppressing shoplifters is cold comfort to a storeowner in NY, LA, Dallas, St. Louis[1], SF[2], or Portland[3]. And that's just the jurisdictions I could turn up in a 2 minute google search.
Not a right winger watching FauxNews, just a moderate (somewhat left of center). But when you see shoplifting happening multiple times a week, where the store worker or security guard is saying “would you please pay for that?” It’s obvious something is out of control.
Again, vibes are manipulated by selective highlighting of specific examples of outrageous behavior. It's often done because certain people profit from your feeling that things are falling apart around you.
Reporting of shoplifting to the police is down for sure, since the police aren’t doing anything about it, there is no reason to report it. How does QFC report something that happens hourly, when they are understaffed already and those reports can only be taken over a phone that is unlikely to be answered, since the police are also understaffed? Petty crime reporting is notoriously noisy, the only reliable crime statistic is homicide (it is actually illegal to not report a murder).
And your data is incomplete, so? We have police chiefs here begging people to report crime since they need it for decent statistic is even if they can’t act on it.
