The only accountability for stealing in New York these days is your bank account.
When someone steals a $100 item from a big box store, New York State immediately loses $4 in sales tax. Monroe County loses an additional $4. Before the January 2020 enactment of bail reform, a very conservative estimate of sales tax revenue lost to larcenies annually in Monroe County was $1.8 million.
In our post-bail reform world, the estimate is more than triple that – $7 million each year. If you consider the number of thefts from retail businesses of any size are underreported by at least half, the reality is more like $14 million annually.
As well-intentioned as bail reform was, it spawned a cycle of unintended consequences – casualties if you will – that invisibly eat tax dollars in a destructive cycle all their own. When the formula for processing people caught stealing changed, so did thieves’ perspectives.
In Monroe County, we run a “Retail Theft Detail.” Law enforcement works with security personnel, our Opioid Task Force, and others to detain serial larcenists. Their priority isn’t to arrest people. Their primary mission is helping thieves redirect their lives so they no longer rely on stealing for a living. They are offered rapid access to human services – substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, medical attention, employment assistance, and more.
Retail Theft Detail officers report a dramatic shift in the dynamics of stealing. Driven largely by drug addiction, many support their habit by stealing. Catch-and-release policies of bail reform encourage thieves to steal to live, steal to die, and die to steal. They simply don’t care about anyone or anything, not even themselves, and certainly not their futures. They tell cops, “Just give me my appearance ticket,” so they can get back to the business of stealing. Most don’t want help fixing their lives.
Just between several big box stores in Monroe County, loss prevention experts conservatively estimate that between January 2020 and October 2022 (a 33-month period) they lost more than $71 million to retail theft – another $5.5 million lost in sales tax revenue.
Bail reform in its current state doesn’t work. Getting arrested for theft in New York State has become a mere inconvenience for criminals. If the accused doesn’t show up for court, a warrant is issued, and if they’re picked up on the warrant, they’re issued another appearance ticket and released.
It almost sounds stupid.
Behind most theft is something much darker than lost sales tax revenue or even businesses closing because they can’t sustain losses and increased costs of doing business.
Remember the person who stole the $100 item? They took it to a pawn shop or a second-hand dealer and got $30 for it. They used the $30 to buy drugs. The drug dealer uses the $30 to buy more drugs and guns. The drugs drive more people to steal. Guns perpetuate street violence. The cycle continues.
Some of the best intentions produce the worst consequences; many minor incidents trigger the biggest tragedies. Even the pettiest theft eventually funds violence in our communities, sucking tax dollars away from both agencies battling crime and human services meant to help people. We live both those realities in Monroe County every day.
And in the end, we all pay.
-Monroe County Sheriff Todd K. Baxter