…or Can’t?
Can someone in the US PLEASE tell me that a kid can’t legally get the cops called on him for putting a candy bar in his pocket, then back on the shelf?
I also meant to add that i’ve heard that in New South Wales (in Australia) if you are caught trying to shop lift an item under a certain amount, and you have enough cash on you to pay for the item then you can argue that you intended to pay for it somehow. Does anyone know anything about this?
Sure they can. It’s not normal practice, and you won’t get anything out of it other than the cops being used to scare the kid straight. I think that would be excessive, but I would ban the kid for a period of time as a lesson. In this case the banning would be for the lady learns a lesson too. Had mom indicated concern, I wouldn’t ban the kid in this case.
No can do. A kid certainly can have the cops called on him. Whether the cops would actually arrest the child is another matter, but stealing or trying to steal is grounds for calling the police regardless of the age of the perpetrator.
Sorry but I can’t jump on the bandwagon here. You are some ruthless motherfuckers based on some of the “what you SHOULD have dones…” that I’ve seen so far. It seems like everyone has forgotten that this is a SIX YEAR OLD. That’s too young for the scared-straight tactics that are being rallied behind in this thread. Six years old. Likely still in kindergarten. Proabably doesn’t even know his letters yet.
Should the kid have been punished? Yeah, but not with the Dr. Phil tough love shit that you are all suggesting. That shit is uncalled for until they are probably in 2nd or 3rd grade and can really begin to understand how society operates. At his age he has no idea of the severity of his actions and nothing more than a simple, polite, talking to may be in order explaining what has happened and why it is wrong. I would come to blows with an adult who treated my 6 year old the way that has been suggested by some in this thread. I don’t give a shit how morally/legally right you think you are. At that age a little lenency is called for.
Granted, the mother should have said/done something though I Do agree.
Oh fair enough. Looking back on my statements it was a silly thing to say.
I guess my issue is that a store owner would actually call the police and waste everyone’s time (mostly the officer’s) in going through the motions when he knows no crime has been committed.
By the way, Duck Duck Goose, the boy NEVER stole a thing. Im not saying that if everything went to plan in his mind he wouldn’t have committed theft. But in this situation, nothing was stolen. Agreed?
Well, you can legally call the cops for anything you like. Whether or not they could have legally arrested him and whether he would have been found legally guilty in court is what’s being argued in posts 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14 and 16 of this thread.
Around here though, the cops would rather be called for something like that than wait 10 years and be called for a “real” robbery or assault committed by a kid who wasn’t raised right. They probably wouldn’t arrest him, just lecture him. They (the cops) are often in or near our Walgreens, anyway. We’re not in a terrible neighborhood, but it’s sketchy enough that you don’t have to go far before seeing a blue uniform. And if they’re there, they’d rather be useful. (I’m basing this on conversations I’ve had with individual officers. I’m sure some of them would feel put out, but all the ones I’ve talked to would be happy to give the kid a little scare.)
No, you’re wrong. A 6 year old is exactly at the right age to be basing his moral decisions on obedience and self-interest. It’s exactly his fear of being caught and punished that will keep him in line right now, and that’s the only thing that will, unless he’s a moral prodigy. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
The interesting thing about those stages is that you have to pass through them sequentially. No one has ever been found to be operating at the “Social Contract” level without first having passed through the “Obedience and Punishment” level. Think about that next time you want to let your kid off the hook because he’s “too little to understand”. If we don’t teach him now, then he’ll be a teenager or young adult and then he’ll begin working through the “Obedience and Punishment” level - at an age where he can do real harm to himself and others. He doesn’t HAVE to understand a social contract at this age. All he needs to know is that stealing a candy bar is WRONG, and if you do it, you will be punished - if not by Mom, then by some other authority figure.
Personal anecdote time:
when my daughter was 4, she loved nail polish. I had my hands full with her and a 2 year old son, so trips to Venture (predates Target) were somewhat chaotic. After one such trip, having left the store and wrestled #1 son into his carseat, I found she had lifted a thing of nail polish. It was February and sleeting. #1 son was irritable and due for a nap. I was exhausted and cranky. I saw that look of consumer lust on her face, polish in hand–I unbuckled #1 son, took her by the hand and told her we had to return that, that we hadn’t paid for it and what she did was wrong.
Inside the store I approached the manager and told him what had happened. By now, Daughter is thoroughly ashamed of herself and in tears. He took the polish and told her to never do that again. And then we went home. I didn’t dwell on it or rub it in–she had had her lesson and it was over. She never stole again–whether from that intervention or other things, I’ll never know.
Neither of us were harsh (she was only 4), but that’s not the point. It’s your fucking JOB as a parent to instill this stuff into your kids.
The saddest thing is that I told several of my girlfriends this story and they ALL said I was “a better man/mom than them”–they would have just gone home. WTF?
I know that to be nostalgic for the past is a mug’s game and all, but by God, this kind of stuff was not put up with when I was young. Oh, some parents probably didn’t bother, but most did. I’m not looking to blame TV or rap music or porn or [insert commonly held source of all society’s ills here], but what the hell has happened? That poor kid.
Huh? Why wouldn’t store employees be legally entitled to call the police when it suspects attempted theft? Even though he’d put it back on the shelf, a lecture from a police officer would probably have been an eye-opening experience for the kid. I think it’s a shame they didn’t call them; and I don’t think the officers would be the least bit upset for being given the opportunity to steer a child away from successfully shoplifting in the future. After all, they’re the ones that are going to have to respond in the future when he’s holding up a gas station.
Well, according to the statutes, it’s not theft until he walked past the register. I said it was attempted theft based on the clear intent. I’m not arguing the intent. He asked his mom for money and getting no response, put the candy in his pocket. Had he not been caught, it’s reasonable to conclude he *would *have walked out without paying for it. But he didn’t, therefore it’s attempted theft.
That said, **Sublight **interpreted the law in the same way I did. Now, if I’m arguing with a defense attorney, I’m willing to say, “forget I mentioned it.” 
I learned my lesson at a young age as well. Thankfully, Mom taught me. I had decided to take some very cheap costume jewelry and as I didn’t have pockets, I concealed them in my balled up fists. The hammer dropped in the restroom when mom was trying to get me to wash my hands after using the facilities. After reluctantly opening my hands to reveal the items, mom realized I was trying to steal them. She began to cry saying she never thought I would do such a thing. As if that wasn’t enough to make me realize my waywardness, she marched me up to the register and forced me to admit and apologize to the manager for my thwarted theft. Talk about embarrassing and humbling. Thanks, Mom.
I’ve never really told anyone this, but when I was about nine years old I stole two Rollo bars from a hardware store checkout. Once my Mom and I got to the car they accidentally fell out of my pants and my Mom asked where I got them. I wasn’t spanked, yelled at, or punished; she just told me to bring them back in and apologize.
I did and it was one of the most humiliating thing ever. The embarrassment combined with the disappointment on my mother’s face has always stayed with me in the back of my mind.
I’ve never stolen a cent since. Thank God for my mother.
Dear Cubsfan. Please don’t parent. You’re not equipped for the task. Unless raising little hedonistic fuckers is what you call parenting.
You’re right.
I also call the police when i see someone litter (ACTUALLY breaking the law), break traffic laws or download music.
I mean it’s better off reporting them now so they don’t end up dumping toxic waste or stealing cars.
Hey, don’t laugh. I know of plenty of adults who don’t think twice about dumping car batteries in the woods and used oil down the sewer.
I must also agree with others that you are wrong here. No one has really advocated doing anything against the six year old; we’re all advocating sterilizing the mother and hoping that she has a husband who might have the first clue about raising children. (That was hyperbole for effect, by the way.)
I also had the same experience as you, bbs2k. I stole some plums from my neighbour’s plum bush just for kicks; my parents found them and marched me back there to return them and apologize. It was, as you say, mortifying. “But,” I can hear Cubsfan saying, “They were just some stupid plums! You were just a young kid!” The point was that they were the neighbour’s plums, not mine, and I had no business messing with them. That was the message my parents wanted me to get, and I got it.
Depends on how closely ya wanna split hairs. He didn’t get away with the goods, true, but his intent was to steal. He wanted candy, his mom wouldn’t give him any money for candy, so he put the candy in his pocket. And he only put it back when he saw that he had been observed. He knew it was wrong–if he’d been younger, like a three-year-old, and genuinely hadn’t understood that taking candy was wrong, he wouldn’t have flinched–“OOPS!”–and quickly put it back. So he knew he was doing the wrong thing. I have preschoolers stand there at my register all the time and grab stuff off the “impulse item” displays while Mommy is checking out, because there are MilkDuds and water balloons right at their eye level, but clearly they don’t know it’s wrong, they only think “want!” and they grab it. When they see that I have seen them take it, when they see me looking at them holding it, they don’t flinch and put it back, they simply continue to hold it and give me that pre-schooler “I perceive that you are a stranger” stare.
But this kid knew darn well he wasn’t supposed to have that. Even a child raised by wolves learns the difference between “mine” and “'not mine”, so even if he didn’t grasp the whole ethical problem with “Stealing”, still he knew perfectly well that that Kit-Kat bar wasn’t “his”, it was “somebody else’s”.
All my anti-shoplifting training, and what I’ve seen at the three Walgreens stores I’ve worked at by way of management and police response to shoplifting, says that putting it in his pocket was sufficient to blow the whistle. My instructions are, if I see someone pocketing merchandise, to holler for management, and they’ll take it from there. Nobody has ever said to me, “You have to wait until they actually leave the store.” Actually, the opposite is true, because once they leave the store, we have no way of stopping them, and if they don’t care to turn around and come back when summoned, we are SOL as far as nipping that particular theft in the bud. But if we intercept them while they’re still in the store, we can rely on intimidation to keep them in place while the cops are called, especially with kids.
I was once in the Ladies room, and overheard two teenage (one was 15 and one was 16) girls in the handicapped stall reviewing their loot and discussing what they were going to keep. I went into the office, summoned the store manager and an assistant, and they busted the girls coming out. One of them had merchandise visible coming out of a jeans pocket, and since she couldn’t produce a receipt, the police were called, the girls emptied their pockets, and they were taken away in handcuffs, the value of the merchandise being over some particular amount.
In spite of the fact that they didn’t leave the store.
There was a strong enough presumption of “intent to steal” that the Decatur PD didn’t have any problem whipping out the cuffs. I suppose the lawyers can quibble about the niceties, but where the rubber meets the road at Walgreens, the cops marched them off to the squad car.
Exactly! Better to learn your lesson on some stupid plums instead of, say, your neighbor’s stereo.
IANAP, but to me the issue here (as several other posters have pointed out) is not whether the kid was guilty of stealing, but the mother’s reaction to what her kid did. Instead of being concerned that her son seems to think that he can just help himself to anything she wants, she not only ignores what he did but rewards him for it by buying it for him. The fact that the kid obviously knows what he did was wrong makes it even worse, because now she’s reinforced the fact that he can get away with doing it again, as long as he’s more careful to be sure he doesn’t get caught.
Exactly, Lurkmeister. You now have our permission to breed at will. 
Thank you. Now I just need to find a willing female…
That is just wrong. You are confusing a procedural rule with an actual element of the crime, and that procedural rule only applies to the intent element. When a person picks up merchandise and puts in his pocket he has satisfied the actus reus. The only question left relates to the intent. Now, intent can be tough to prove. The procedural rule says that if the person actually leaves the store that is all you need to prove the intent element (this can be rebutted); however, you can still establish intent without using the procedural rule. If he confessed or was overheard saying I am going to steal this candy or you found copies of plans he drew up, you could use those to establish intent without ever using the procedural rule.
The actus reas element is satisfied as soon as he put the candy in his pocket. You have repeatedly said that he had intent to steal the candy, but you keep referring to a procedural rule that relates to the intent element to show that he did not satisfy the actus reas element. Your analysis is confused.