In a Universe in which the wicked prospered, there might be no incentive to virtue. You would not want your beautiful daughter or handsome son going to prison with serial killers because they shoplifted. Violent crimes are considered the most threatening because they involve offenses against persons. They include homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape. The word justice is used in varying context. The punishment meted out by the state to a criminal or by a parent to his or her children is not the same as the punishment boxers give or receive. The latter, however, is punishment only in a metaphorical sense, for it lacks several of the features necessary to a standard case of punishment. Characteristically, punishment is unpleasant. In it inflicted on an offender because of an offense one has committed; it is deliberately imposed, not just the natural consequence of a person’s action (like a hang-over), and the unpleasantness is essential to it, not an accidental accompaniment to some other treatment (like the pain of the dentist’s drill). It is imposed by an agent authorized by the system of rules against which an offense has be committed; a lynching is not a standard case of punishment. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

Philosophers who have written on punishment have usually had in mind punishment mainly connected with the questions of justification. Currently the economy is not in great condition, and it takes more than ten years for people to get into affordable housing. The prisons and the court systems are overcrowded, public defenders and other law enforcement officials do have adequate resources to always do their jobs as well as they would like to or lack to the funds to investigate crimes as they should. And with the costs of housing, food, energy, insurance, clothing, and fuel rising, there not enough affordable housing to go around, so the community is really hurting. Nevertheless, Assembly member Jim Cooper (Democrat of Elk Grove, California USA), along with some special interest grounds is creating AB 1326, which would change the threshold for a felony from $950.00 for the individual occurrence of crime, to the aggregate amount of the crime value, in a 1-year period, totaling $950.00. What that means if that if someone was caught stealing less than $950.00, and if they were caught, they would face a misdemeanor, which is usually one year or less in jail, or a fine and possible probation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

We do asses the gravity of an offense and try to ensure that the punishment for a trivial offense is less severe than a serious one. However, if AB 1326 passes, there is now a running tab on your record, and if you steal up to $950.00 or more from a store or any other place or any other place in one year, you are facing a felony. So, that means if a person goes shopping and walks out of the store with a pair of shoes that cost $500.00, and later on that year steals a shopping cart of food that is valued at $450.00, that individual is now facing a felony. A misdemeanor is a serious crime, but usually does not prohibit one from getting a job. However, a felony is extremely bad, and means that you will spend more than a year in prison and will not be able to get a job because most people will not hire felons. It is, prima facie, wrong to deliberately inflict suffering or deprivation on another person, yet AB 1326 consists in doing precisely this. Some people unintentionally steal. A person may try on a pair of shoes and forget to pay for them. Other people steal out of need, not for fun. Punishment is necessary to annul the wrong done by the criminal, but AB1326 seems to a cry of injustice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

Justice is supposed to reinforce the community’s respect for its legal and moral standards, which criminal acts would tend to undermine if they were not solemnly denounced. Recently, Governor Jerry Brown allowed early release of “Non-violent” felons, as a way to reduce overcrowding in California’s prisons. Proposition 57 released people into the community who were convicted of: rape by intoxication, rape of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving sex act with minors, drive-by-shooting, assault with a deadly weapon, hostage taking, attempting to explode a bomb at a hospital or school, domestic violence involving trauma, supplying a firearm to a gang member, hate crime causing physical injury, failing to register as a sex offender, arson, discharging a firearm on school grounds, lewd acts against a child 14 or 15, false imprisonment of an elder through violence. Inmates continue to walk out of prison early because of this law, which was designed to reduce prison overcrowding. Many of the people being released are individuals who have actually killed people and robbed people with guns. These crimes upset the balance of the moral order, which can be restored only by one being made to suffer. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

Punishment is supposed to impress both on the criminal and one everyone else that a breach of the law and morals is so serious that society must prevent it. It is absolutely terrifying to hear that the person who tried to kill you, or the person who shot you, or the person who raped you, or the person who beat you is coming back into your community, and we are repopulating the prison and charging people with felonies for shop lifting. How can a community justify AB1326 when it negates the justice system? This bill does not restore the balance or annul the wrong, when others convicted of more serious crimes were released from prison. Yes, shoplifting is a problem, but the bag ban in California has made it much harder for stores to detect who is a customer and who is stealing. Yet, by releasing serious criminals and replacing them with shoplifters, the consequences are we are, as a society, inflicting intrinsic evil on suffering human beings. The most serious offenses against morals deserve the most severe penalties. The function of criminal law is to punish wickedness or immorality in order to maintain a kind of cosmic distributive justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

To eliminate shoplifting might need heavier penalties then to eliminate murder, and that would be monstrous. If we call shoplifting trivial, we mean that each one causes relatively little suffering; therefore, we are prepared to put up with more of it than rather than incur the cost of making offenders suffer heavy penalties. Murder and extortion, on the other hand, cause so much more suffering that if heavier penalties would yield even a small reduction in the number of offenses, there might be a net gain even through offenders would suffer more than they did before. Severe penalties ought to be restricted to serious offenses, and would can argue that we call an offense serious precisely because it causes a great deal of suffering. One violent crime happens every 22 seconds. One murder every 32.9 minutes, forcible rape every 5.8 minutes, robbery every 1.2 minutes, aggravated assault every 34.8 seconds, burglary every 14.9 seconds, larceny-theft every 4.5 seconds, motor vehicle theft every 25.7 seconds. Therefore, we should save law enforcement resources so they have the time and means to investigate and prevent the. Only serious crimes are worth averting at the cost of severe penalties.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 6

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