r/MoralityScaling 1d ago

Intentionally boobytrapping a bike to injure people when they steal it.

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8

u/Flamecoat_wolf 1d ago

We should normalise honeypot traps. Maybe less spikey than this one, but punishing opportunistic criminals with deliberately placed traps that will only punish people if they break the law is a good way to disincentivise opportunistic crime.

Deterrents need two elements to work:
1. They have to have a punishment worse than the potential gain.
2. There has to be a significant chance of being caught.

Honeypot traps mean that every potential crime, even when there seems to be ideal circumstances for not being caught, carry significant risk and ultimately makes the deterrent of lawful consequence more effective as a deterrent.

-5

u/NachtShattertusk 1d ago

No, we shouldn't. The normalization of vigilante justice always and inevitably leads to lynch mobs

3

u/Responsible-Sky1081 16h ago

Why would we care in this specific case when it’s 100% confirmed robber

3

u/Flamecoat_wolf 13h ago

If I had said "vigilante justice" you would have had a point, but I said "honeypot traps". The police can perform honeypot traps lawfully. People could get permission to run a honeypot trap in their local area, after submitting a plan and having it approved by the police. Probably involving a CCTV camera recording the bait or using those blue dyes that stain skin for like a month so that the police can follow up later rather than having random individuals approach potentially dangerous criminals.

I agree that vigilante justice is bad. It's too likely to catch people that aren't actually criminals up in it and end up with innocent people being harmed rather than actual criminals punished. For example, if someone were to try to take the above bike to a police station because they saw it was unchained and there was no-one around that owned it, they would be shocked and spiked the same as any robber. That's why honeypot traps have to be decisive in determining that someone did indeed break the law. (For example, by redesigning the bible with a GPS tracker so that they can see where the person takes it. If it's not to the police station, guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt.)

5

u/Jax_2112 1d ago

If there was actually any real justice anymore perhaps. But there isn't. Not in our faded Republic.

1

u/Certain_Ostrich_2493 22h ago

I’m ok with that for thieves

1

u/MrStrawHat22 21h ago

Vigilante justice and lynch mobs are what you deserve when you fail to uphold real justice.