Stealing

For those of you who have not been living alone under a rock for their whole life you will no doubt know about stealing, hell even those who have been living under a rock have probably experienced stealing. Whether it’s shoplifting, mugging or you saw a large job reported on the news, you no doubt know about the problems the ‘five finger discount’ can cause.

There are so many different levels of stealing combined with even more reasons for stealing. With each theft comes an associated punishment, a more severe punishment for a more severe crime, which is understandable and is believed in by many.

Theft comes in stages and affects man different areas. There are personal thefts from home or even in the streets such as mugging and home robbery. Stealing then goes up a level to shops and shoplifting generally smaller stores such as corner shops I would put into this category. After these come high street stores, games, toys and electronics. After these come more professional jobs, warehouses, companies and the like.

People have very different reactions to stealing, which are understandable to some degree; some people need to steal to live. Left to live on the street at a young age unable to much with their life, they end up stealing food from an open air market to feed themselves or they may walk into a shop and pocket a candy bar and some bread before leaving. Should these people be punished? The legal system says yes but does our moral compass?

I can happily say that I have never stolen anything in my life, I once walked out of a shop with a chocolate bar by accident but I walked straight back in and gave the money to the shopkeeper, why you might ask, well it just felt like it was the right thing to do.

That is the main point I’m trying to make with this post.
IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

I don’t know what possesses people to commit crimes such as thievery, especially to another person, I can almost understand stealing from a corporation, the whole ‘It doesn’t hurt anyone except the hotshot businessmen’ attitude. (well I say almost, I can’t justify stealing at all, I’m just trying to be nice to those who do, yes you, you lowlife, no not you).

Also before I conclude I almost missed out one of the most irritating thefts around the world, identity theft. When you think they have taken everything they take your name and family too, sucks eh? Well I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad if you were a wanted felon though as you could pretty much get a get out of jail free card half the time.

I’m sure many of you feel the same way about theft though, if it doesn’t happen to you or anyone you care about it is pretty much out of your mind all day, that’s how it is normally, a simple case of out of sight out of mind. Is this best? Probably, you would end up being a paranoid schizophrenic if you constantly thought about the ways in which you could have things stolen from you.

All you can do is keep anything valuable hidden and anything precious to you even more so. You will no doubt experience theft in your time on a personal level, however the trick is to try and move on with your life and not become too paranoid.

Below is a link that gives a little information on ID theft on the internet which I didn’t go into in my post, please take a look, if nothing else it may help prevent you from being a statistic.

http://www.guard-privacy-and-online-security.com/internet-id-theft-statistics.html