Rotten stinking lowlife scum!

[jmk89]

If they made receiving the same penalty as actually stealing it would close down another loophole for these lowlifes.

Woodhunt

A bit of a trick here - if the stealing is a major indictable offence, then receiving has a 10 year tarrif, if not it has a three year tarrif. Some of the "majors" have a less than 10 year tarrif, some have more...

Either way, my experience of the law (25 years in study and practice) suggests that so long as the penalty is not totally minimal (usually $1000 or less) the size of the penalty does not affect whether or not people commit the crime. That's why capital punishment has been shown statistically to have had no effect on crime.

[echnidna]

except that capital punishment can get the scum out of the community for a while.

I reckon the old fashioned stocks could be a real deterrent based on the embarrassment targeted at the scum

[jmk89]

except that capital punishment can get the scum out of the community for a while.

I reckon the old fashioned stocks could be a real deterrent based on the embarrassment targeted at the scum

capital punishment gets them out of the community forever - but juries don't convict because they hate the thought that they might make a mistake.

[Matt88s]

Thats a bummer Christopha.

I remember back when I was running a lawn service, sneak thieves were always a bugger as you always had to be keeping track of your equipment and watching out for people stopping, pulling in by your truck and trailer, just even neighbors of the people where you were, you'd be in back mowing and you'd see people slow down as they drove past, eyeing your equipment and wondering where you were, not knowing that you could see them. Then you had to watch out for the professionals, they setup to look like a lawn crew, have a trailer setup for leaves or such, full of leaves or such, but under the leaves would be a plywood tunnel, they'd run teams, have people out canvasing looking for easy targets, open garages, lawn crews being careless with equipment, etc, they'd call the team with the trailer and stand watch while the trailer team moved in and nicked the stuff and in the tunnel under the leaves it would go and then off they'd go looking just like any other lawn service in the area. We had some in the area for a while that were pretty darn good.

I've often seen tradesmen running about locally, with saws and other misc equipment in the back of their trucks just sitting there. I've often thought as I was getting into my truck or car, and staring at a truck bed full of equipment beside me, "Don't people ever steal their stuff"? and wonder why they leave it out like that. If it was my truck, it'd be picked bare before I got out of the filler station with my cuppa joe.

I would never take anything, but I was always taught to keep it out of sight and thus out of temptation as even if its in a locked car if you leave something of value in sight its always a temptation for someone nick it even if they have to break the window or whatnot.

I always go take the time to put anything of value out of sight and lock my doors even if I'm only going to be gone a minute, its worth it to me just so I don't have to deal with the trouble of having something stolen, or dealing with the person if i come out and surprise someone in the act.

For tradesmen this is a bit harder, they usually can't sweep all their tools and equipment under the seat or paper or in the trunk, but all you can do is what you can do, where there's a will there's a way, people will always figure out somehow to steal something if they want it bad enough.