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>The average cost to incarcerate someone for a year is $31k.

In the Baltimore-Washington stretch of Maryland, it's hard to find a retail store with an ATM in the front, because it's common for thieves to crash a vehicle through the glass into the ATM, load it into their vehicle, and drive away. I've talked with a couple store owners where it has happened, and apparently, nobody was ever caught in their cases.

Baltimore has some parts where you can't even enter stores. Instead, you have to wait in enclosed bulletproof glass areas while the clerks gather items for you.

The restaurant where I work at on the weekends once got a GrubHub driver open carrying with a bulletproof vest. One of our regular GrubHub drivers got carjacked by a man who shot a police officer right out front of the restaurant.

Everyone I've mentioned so far is black, in case it matters.

If we do not swallow the costs of jailing lawbreakers, then the rest of America will be like this.

>I'm sure not going to opt to spend an order of magnitude more trying to punish thieves.

Judges typically balance 3 primary factors in sentencing criminals:

- Punishment of the criminal.

- Protecting the community from the criminal.

- Provide justice and closure to victims of the criminal.

Punishing the thief is just one aspect of this. It's an important one, because it serves as a deterrent for future would-be thieves. Crime is going unpunished in Baltimore. As a result, the community is not protected and victims have no justice. People have been leaving for years now.



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