Topper

Depends on the crime, and maybe the people involved.

During the year after high school that I worked retail in a large box store, I had two different shoplifter encounters that elicited two very different types of responses from me.

The first was a guy with his 5-7 year old daughter trying to sneak a steak under his jacket late one night for dinner. When I was helping him determine why the bag he was trying to carry out (of food he had bought) was setting off the alarms, he soon confessed to having the steak hidden under his jacket. He was of course extremely apologetic, ashamed, etc (sincere or not, he did act this way). And I gave him as best of a verbal/ethical reprimand as I could manage, but I let him go. You could say perhaps I took more pity on his young daughter then him though, as I quickly tried to weigh the life she must live with a shoplifting father, vs. being a witness to her father getting dragged in to the security office (and maybe even the police getting called). But while the child may have been a factor, I didn't end the situation with any real ill will towards the guy.

The other situation was the exact opposite, when a drifter type with a shopping cart loaded with camping goodies and food went right through the alarms and made a bee line for the doors obviously ignoring my calls for him to please stop. In this situation, it sparked the exact opposite reaction from me, resulting in me chasing him down in the parking lot outside, dogging him back into the store, and making him jump through all the security hoops I could. He was stubborn, rude, argumentive, etc. The bastard managed to get off, but clearly I'm still bitter..

Two similar situations (hell the drifter may have "needed" the items even more then the guy trying to get a fancy steak for dinner, who knows), but due to the child, and the behavior of the first guy, I did show some "mercy" I guess you could say.

These of course are relatively "minor" offenses... not sure I'd make any parallel with more "serious" crimes.