Colleen McCarty: Multiple thefts shouldn't be a felony

One more thing: At the end of the video, former State Rep Kris Steele says incarcerating someone for stealing $1,000 makes no sense, because it costs $20,000 a year. It does make sense, because the harm done by that thief is far more than the monetary value stolen, and what the thief is charged with stealing is probably far less than what he actually stole. If he's in prison, he can't steal.

I think back to a couple of burglaries I suffered -- one from my childhood, when my toy safe was pried open and some coins given to me by my great-grandmother were stolen, as were some of my parents' belongings; one from my young adulthood, when our camcorder and camera were stolen along with the photos and videos of my oldest son's third birthday. The monetary value was minuscule, but the sense of violation was tremendous.

That first burglary happened in the early 1970s, when there was still an expectation that you could leave your door unlocked and not worry that anything would go missing. But the expert class, with policies grounded in a false understanding of human nature, spent the 1960s and 1970s undermining the moral and social constraints that produced a high-trust society. One of those vanished constraints was the expectation of swift and sure punishment for crime.

Half a century later, we live in a world in which theft is just part of the cost of doing business. Entire sections of our cities lack easy access to groceries and medications because theft makes it uneconomic for retailers to stay in business. Look around Tulsa and notice all the retail chains that have closed locations in recent years. But Colleen McCarty is more worried about the poor, pitiful crooks.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1777, Adam Smith wrote that the "generous and human" feel pity for the guilty as they face judgment and are inclined to forgive, but this is a "weak and partial humanity" which needs to be counterbalanced by "the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and comprehensive." (Emphasis added.)

Such is the account commonly given of our approbation of the punishment of injustice. And so far this account is undoubtedly true, that we frequently have occasion to confirm our natural sense of the propriety and fitness of punishment, by reflecting 137how necessary it is for preserving the order of society. When the guilty is about to suffer that just retaliation, which the natural indignation of mankind tells them is due to his crimes; when the insolence of his injustice is broken and humbled by the terror of his approaching punishment; when he ceases to be an object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an object of pity. The thought of what he is about to suffer extinguishes their resentment for the sufferings of others to which he has given occasion. They are disposed to pardon and forgive him, and to save him from that punishment, which in all their cool hours they had considered as the retribution due to such crimes. Here, therefore, they have occasion to call to their assistance the consideration of the general interest of society. They counterbalance the impulse of this weak and partial humanity by the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and comprehensive. They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, and oppose to the emotions of compassion which they feel for a particular person, a more enlarged compassion which they feel for mankind.

We don't need a DA with misplaced pity for the sociopaths who would rather steal than work.