Cities that stopped treating theft as theft did not get less poverty. They got fewer stores. If toothpaste and soap are “crimes of poverty,” the repeater learns the aisle is free. Prosecutors drop it, cops stop wasting the arrest, and chains start doing math. Shrink piles up, staff get hit, merchandise goes behind glass, prices rise for the people who actually pay — that’s how a neighborhood loses jobs and a place to buy groceries. This policy will never work because it pretends the thief is the victim and the store is a social-service office. A business cannot eat unlimited losses. It locks the deodorant, then it locks the door. The people left behind are the ones who followed the law and still got the higher price.