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The shamed shoplifter of Cleary Square
By adamg on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 2:19pm
There was an older guy standing outside the Tedeschi on River Street this afternoon wearing yellow sandwich boards. In English and Spanish, they read:
I am a shoplifter!
I am a thief!
I steal!
That's not the kind of thing you see too often, so I asked him if he really was a shoplifter. He said he was and that part of his sentence was an unusual form of community service: Stand outside the Tedeschi with the signs after school for 90 days, as a warning to the kids from the nearby Hyde Park High School who frequent the store.
Beats the stocks, I guess.
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Comments
The opening segment of a
The opening segment of a recent This American Life episode was about a town in Florida where this is a frequent sentence for petty thieves.
The sad part is that a lot
The sad part is that a lot of elderly people shoplift to exist now or becaus ethey cannot afford things. Even with the available food banks and charities that is not enough. And not all elderly housing has shuttles to the charities - only to the grocery stores.
I personally witnessed an elderly gent who was at least in his 80s stopped at Roches in West Roxbury at the door. Their handling was simple - they took the bag and removed the items not paid for and told the fellow to not return to the store.
Public pillory was eliminated from our system quite some time ago. It may serve as a warning and treatment for the youth offender but to do that to the elderly is simply not acceptable.
Our society is collapsing.
Maybe 'older' was the wrong word
He looked more like late 50s than Social Security recipient, although I'm not the best judge of age (and have no photo; I had my camera, but asked him if I could take his picture, not surprisingly, he said no).
Decent of you to ask
A lot of people would've snapped and then posted on Flickr and Blogspot and such. Sounds like the guy has more than enough humiliation and alienation already. I'd be traumatized by the experience, myself.
Not quite collapsing yet...
Maybe it will cause the youth offender to put himself in the elderly person's shoes and say, "wait a second...why is he stealing?" A subtle reminder to change one's ways, no?
I think a judge, seeing that the offender would not survive in a jail cell, thought of something more innovative. It is humiliating, but I can bet you he or anyone else seeing it would probably have that than a long sentence in jail.
He must've been there for a few days already
Because I happened to be there just as a wave of kids was walking by and none of them seemed to be the least bit interested in him. So he's become like that fake owl on that weird building next to the Dunkin' Donuts on Hyde Park Avenue that the pigeons ignore. Either that or nothing fazes Hyde Park High kids.
That's who that was?
I was headed to Tedeschi for hot dog rolls when I saw the guy from a sandwich board from a distance - I thought it was promotion for a new store.
Anyhow, it didn't prevent the kids from the Rogers and Hyde Park High from entering; it did reduce the number of kids from hanging around, including one person with a skateboard. It looks like some of the judges are getting more innovative in sentencing, which can be more cost effective than tossing people into jail. Sure, it's humiliation, but would you rather carry around a sandwich board for 90 days, or be subject to the lack of freedom thereof in a jail cell for the same amount of time?
Maybe people around Cleary Square are finally getting fed up with the kids who hang around the stores when the schools empty out. It's almost the year-end anyway, so between July and August there will be no kids hanging around there.
Humilliation?
He probably had other options, but chose this one because it fit his schedule or he thought it would be easier than others.
Public Humiliation is a good tool.
Haven't we tried everything else so far? We should have more of this sort of thing. I know that if I had committed any crimes, I wouldn't want to have to stand there with a billboard on me telling the world what I had done.
certain instances okay, but this one?
There are certain instances where public shaming may be appropriate punishment, like the Madoffs and Ken Lays of the world.
But as for this one....
I confess I don't know the background about this situation, yet something about it makes me feel terrible for the guy wearing the sandwich board. "Community service" and abject humiliation are not one in the same.
Or, to put it another way, anyone who would be truly shamed by this punishment can be rehabilitated in other ways...
Yea how about just give him a broom
and have him sweep up the parking lot or sidewalk in front of the store or something?
Or pick up trash in some park around Boston that needs it.