So there is this interesting segment on This American Life on KQED about seniors who shoplift. Apparently this is a pretty widespread phenomena. I was a bit disturbed by the alternative course they made seniors attend instead of going to jail which told seniors how they should feel bad about shoplifting. This seems perilously close to government endorsed morality.

In an ideal world the criminal justice system in its official capacity would be about imposing published penalties for illegal acts not about making moral judgments. I find it particularly disturbing the way the application of the death penalty seems to depend almost exclusively on moral judgments. For instance, you are probably more likely to be executed if you kill someone for sexual gratification or as part of a satanic ritual than if you kill a business rival who is interfering with your profits even though deterrence would cut the other way. Worse, current religious and moral beliefs of the defendant make a huge difference. The fact that if Moussaoui had converted to Christianity and expressed regret he would almost certainly would avoid the death penalty seems a blatant violation of the first amendment but I don’t see any practical way to avoid this. I mean in effect we are executing someone for not agreeing with us that his actions were wrong, not to mention the problem that his underlying crime is merely a failure to inform the government of a plot and raises troubling 5th amendment issues. This doesn’t mean I necessarily oppose the death penalty, I’m still not sure if the extra scrutiny it brings to the justice system outweighs the harms but it is disturbing.

Anyway back to the point of this post which is: Why don’t more seniors/terminally ill people commit crimes? I don’t mean just shoplifting but also big crimes like bank robbery. It would seem that there has be a significant number of people who realize they have only a few months to live, less time then their lawyer could stall out their trial and people who are really old or about to die are given a pass on prison anyway. Even if they feel a bit scared of violating the law it seems in many cases they might even have a moral obligation to engage in theft and donate the money to useful charities. Sure if everyone went and robbed banks when they were about to die it would cost banks more money in insurance but this would effectively amount to an increased tax and many people (myself included) believe that we should raise taxes and use the money for good.

I mean if I ever discover I have a terminal illness and am still well enough to pull off a bank robbery a few months before my death I sure as hell would do it. I’d probably be pretty scared but it would be one hell of an experience and I might even be morally obligated to do so. I guess I’m just surprised that such a huge majority of people seem to really buy into the cultural norms society presents to them.