Poll: An unlocked car is stolen, who is to blame?

[Pyrian]

You're conflating responsibility and criminal liability. These are 2 different things.

What do you think criminal liability is based on?

A lot of things, really. For one thing, leaving your car unlocked isn't illegal in itself, so it's hard to see why criminal liability would get applied. Then there's the issue of intent. Did you know that accidentally stealing a car isn't illegal? Assuming you take corrective action as soon as you're aware of the mistake, you can't be charged. So accidentally leaving it unlocked sure as heck shouldn't be liable. Then there's the fact that intentionally depriving yourself of property isn't illegal, either, so even if you left it unlocked on purpose, you're still in the clear. (Failing to protect your own life is illegal in many contexts, for example seat belt laws.)

Now, if you left someone else's car unlocked with the express intention that a third party might steal it, THEN you could get hit with criminal negligence.

If I shoot you and you die, is it your fault because you didn't wear a ballistic vest?

According to you she is, since she did the shooting.

There's no malicious intent on the child's part. We can reasonably assume that Dirty Hipster shot you on purpose.

 

[K12]

9 year old girl goes with her parents to a shooting range. Range instructor gives the child a fully automatic submachine gun and lets her shoot it. The child can't control the recoil and shoots the range instructor in the head. Range instructor dies.

Who is at fault?

You've added in the additional element of intention which changes the situation quite a bit. If the 9 year old deliberately shot the guy then she would be to blame (but given her age the criminal responsibility would lie with her parents for not

With an accident the actual event wasn't a choice so the main blame goes to person who made the choices that lead to led up to the event, in this case the instructor. You can't steal a car by accident (expect in a very contrived scenario)

For some here, they would say the murdered person was not wearing enough armor and was asking for it.

A better comparison might be if someone had sex with a guy's wife and then went to the gun shop that he works in and start braggin about to him... it's hard to not consider him partially to blame in that instance. We do take provocation into account when sentencing people for murder... though they are still to blame for the murder.



Here's a genuine scenario that might stretch people a bit. There was a case in the UK in 2003 of a 15 year old boy (called Mark) who attemped to murder his 14 year old friend (called John). If you think this is going towards a "the bully had what was coming to him" story then you are completely fucking wrong and I would suggest you watch this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfECN3zFTjg.

It is some of the most fucked up unbelievable shit I have ever heard.

Spoiler

The short version is that after a long online friendship with John (who was pretending to be multiple different people) he somehow managed to manipulate Mark into believing that John was a spy and that he was dying of a brain tumour.

John (as one of his aliases) managed to convince and organise for Mark to kill him as an act of mercy with the reward of money, a job in the British Secret Service and to have sex with the middle-aged female spy character than John was pretending to be. Mark's family was threatened if he didn't go though with it.

John is probably the only person in the UK who has been convicted of inciting his own murder

 

[Major_Tom]

Real scenario:

9 year old girl goes with her parents to a shooting range. Range instructor gives the child a fully automatic submachine gun and lets her shoot it. The child can't control the recoil and shoots the range instructor in the head. Range instructor dies.

Who is at fault? The child who shot the range instructor in the head? According to you she is, since she did the shooting.

No, it's the range instructor's fault for giving the child a gun that the child cannot reasonably be expected to control.

Spoiler

Your argument fails on two separate accounts. Either one by itself would be enough to disprove it.

1 - child

Human brain isn't fully matured until early twenties. Children aren't completely aware of consequences of their actions, and this is evident in our society which severely limits minors' freedom until they are 18 or 21. If you said "9 year old girl shoots you, whose fault it is?" without any of the shooting range bullshit, I would have said "The one who gave her access to the gun".

2 - intent

On the other hand, in the shooting range example, the child is irrelevant. If an adult woman shot the instructor, it would still be the instructor's fault. It was an accident, she didn't mean to shoot him.

This really has nothing to do with the original question. How do you accidentally steal a car?

Spoiler: In short, your post is one big...

 

[Pyrian]

How do you accidentally steal a car?

It's happened way more often than you'd think. Several popular car models were made with only like 6 different keys. So people would go into a parking lot to find their car, find another car of the same make and model, and if they didn't notice anything amiss, they'd have a decent chance of being able to drive it away with their key.

 

[Major_Tom]

It's happened way more often than you'd think. Several popular car models were made with only like 6 different keys. So people would go into a parking lot to find their car, find another car of the same make and model, and if they didn't notice anything amiss, they'd have a decent chance of being able to drive it away with their key.

OK, but in that case leaving it unlocked makes no difference.

 

[Tayh]

I'd say the guilt lies wholly and exclusively on the person who decided to commit a crime.
An open door is an accident, not an invitation for burglars.

 

[sageoftruth]

I keep noticing a common misunderstanding that's causing a lot of tension here. Basically the idea that accusing someone of negligence somehow makes the perpetrator less guilty. The original question is party to blame for this, I'd say, since it portrays this as a zero-sum dilemma where the thief and the victim somehow have to share the blame, rather than a dilemma where the thief is a reprehensible criminal regardless of how foolish the victim was acting. It's okay to call the victim foolish, irresponsible, or downright idiotic (based on context). It's not excusing the thief or stating that it's sometimes okay to steal cars.

 

[Marik2]

I had a fun time with a friend the other day watching Princess Mononoke and I expressed my love of the movie for the gray morality it has. He's a very logical thinker I'm an emotional one so it was a nice debate over if there was really a bad guy in the movie. He posed a moral situation and asked how I felt about it.

A person purposely leaves his car unlocked and it gets stolen, who is to blame?

I said it was the person who stole it and he said it was the person who did not lock the car.

What does the Escapist think?

Edit: Typos in the poll oops.

That seems to be a bait car from what I've been seeing lately

 

[McElroy]

I keep noticing a common misunderstanding that's causing a lot of tension here. Basically the idea that accusing someone of negligence somehow makes the perpetrator less guilty. The original question is party to blame for this, I'd say, since it portrays this as a zero-sum dilemma where the thief and the victim somehow have to share the blame, rather than a dilemma where the thief is a reprehensible criminal regardless of how foolish the victim was acting. It's okay to call the victim foolish, irresponsible, or downright idiotic (based on context). It's not excusing the thief or stating that it's sometimes okay to steal cars.

Similarly I've had my bicycle stolen three times, each time it was unlocked, and two times it was clearly visible to passers-by and left alone for hours. Especially in these two cases I blame myself for being a complete moron (like in what universe is it more important to get to a math lesson in time than securing your expensive bicycle? rhetorical question), but that doesn't mean I don't fantasize about beating up the thief or that I would let them off the hook because it was so easy to steal the bike.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I keep noticing a common misunderstanding that's causing a lot of tension here. Basically the idea that accusing someone of negligence somehow makes the perpetrator less guilty.

Well, when it's termed as blame being shared, then yes, it does.

It's okay to call the victim foolish, irresponsible, or downright idiotic (based on context). It's not excusing the thief or stating that it's sometimes okay to steal cars.

But if it's partially the victim fault for the crime, why isn't the victim then prosecuted?

 

[Pyrian]

I keep noticing a common misunderstanding that's causing a lot of tension here. Basically the idea that accusing someone of negligence somehow makes the perpetrator less guilty.

Well, when it's termed as blame being shared, then yes, it does.

It doesn't become true just because someone said it that way.

But if it's partially the victim fault for the crime, why isn't the victim then prosecuted?

You've ignored multiple rebuttals in favor of merely repeating over-and-over your already-answered rhetorical question as if it weren't easily dispatched. Do you actually have any kind of point to this?

 

[veloper]

The thief is still a criminal, but the owner is not blameless. I see two separate misdeeds.

What should the owner be charged with and what sentence should he/she receive?

He should be laughed at whenever he tells someone what happened.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

You've ignored multiple rebuttals in favor of merely repeating over-and-over your already-answered rhetorical question as if it weren't easily dispatched. Do you actually have any kind of point to this?

I never got an answer; should they be prosecuted, and if not, why not as they are partially responsible for the crime occuring?

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

The thief is still a criminal, but the owner is not blameless. I see two separate misdeeds.

What should the owner be charged with and what sentence should he/she receive?

He should be laughed at whenever he tells someone what happened.

Seems to be a pretty light sentence for being involved in high dollar theft, wouldn't you say?

 

[veloper]

The thief is still a criminal, but the owner is not blameless. I see two separate misdeeds.

What should the owner be charged with and what sentence should he/she receive?

He should be laughed at whenever he tells someone what happened.

Seems to be a pretty light sentence for being involved in high dollar theft, wouldn't you say?

Not really. It's a proportional response to someone being willfully careless with his own stuff.
On top of that, the owner already lost the car, as reality took care of that. If the thief ever gets caught, then someone can get sentenced for theft, but that's a separate case.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If theft is the normal state of affairs and the owner is aware of it, the owner. If theft is a bizarre accident which almost never happens, the thief.


The key question is "how likely is it for an unlocked car to be stolen". If, despite knowing the likelihood is very high, you allow your car to be unlocked out of some mistaken sense of arbitrary human morality of "stealing is wrong" then you are an idiot who doesn't realize the limited scope of social contract when in a world that doesn't have mind control.


It's kinda like why letting your kids walk to school by themselves in broad daylight is fine but letting them walk at night in the middle of a red light district would likely net you in jail for child abandonment/endangerment. The same laws apply in both stretches of road but it's not quiiiite that simple.

It's like when we blame parents for letting their daughters go to college knowing the high college rape numbers...oh wait

Unless the daughter is some kind of exception, she'd be an adult by the time she is in college so it'd be her choice, not the parent's. Not blaming them when their daughter is an adult who makes her own choices is obviously the normal reaction.

We don't blame the daughter either. Do you?

No, since merely going to college isn't the same as being raped and if a woman knows the statistics and chooses to go then it is logical to assume she is ready to protect herself more so than someone who might be ignorant.

I in general wouldn't blame people for merely taking some risk in their life since almost nothing is safe and you can't spend your life inside a tank just to be safe. The issue is how big of a risk it is you're taking. Merely going to college isn't particularly risky. Doing things like college parties and drinking alcohol and stuff is where most of the rapes occur and you can go to college and do none of that stuff just fine.

Ok, so you only victim blame if the girl willingly goes to a party?

Again, not every party is the same kind of party and not everyone who goes to a party behaves in the same way. You keep trying to apply a broad structure to very specific irresponsible things that ought be avoided and are common sense. Going to a party is fine just like going to college is fine. Even if you go to a party if you are not irresponsible the risk is low enough to make the outing reasonable.

When it starts being too risky to be worth it is if you for example go to a party hosted by someone you don't know, without any friends or people you know that can help you if something happens, and then drink to a stupor (which in general is irresponsible and no matter what you do while drunk you will be blamed for it). After a certain point, you are taking dumb risks that as a logical person you should have been smart enough not to take. Weather you actually get raped or not is besides the point, you still are irresponsible for behaving thus and that is the issue.

 

[K12]

I keep noticing a common misunderstanding that's causing a lot of tension here. Basically the idea that accusing someone of negligence somehow makes the perpetrator less guilty. The original question is party to blame for this, I'd say, since it portrays this as a zero-sum dilemma where the thief and the victim somehow have to share the blame, rather than a dilemma where the thief is a reprehensible criminal regardless of how foolish the victim was acting. It's okay to call the victim foolish, irresponsible, or downright idiotic (based on context). It's not excusing the thief or stating that it's sometimes okay to steal cars.

This is totally it. I think the misconception is that the amount of blame to be proportioned out will always add up to 100% which entails that if the person who leaves the car unlocked is 10% to blame then the criminal could only be 90% to blame rather than 100%. You could potentially argue that the perpetrator has committed a less egregious act because it was opportunistic rather than pre-meditated but that's a separate issue and doesn't follow necessarily.

If somebody is murdered by two people simultaneously (say two separate people both shoot someone at the same time leaving two separate fatal wounds) then they are both 100% guilty of murder not each 50% guilty of murder. It's the actions and intentions that matter most when it comes to blame, not the chain of causality.

If I poison my friend's food with a slow acting poison and he eats it but ends up choking to death on the last piece of the meal before the poison can take effect then am I guilty of murder or attempted murder?

 

[MrFalconfly]

Why should all the criminal blame be on the thief if he's only partially at fault by your own admission?

Because he's (the car owner) already being handed a punishment that's proportionate with what he did wrong.

He didn't lock his car. That is proportionate with a bit of harmless ridicule, and the grievance of loosing your car.

The car thief on the other hand did something illegal, under his own volition. And since he did the illegal component in this whole series of event (actually stealing the car), he deserves the punishment proportionate with his action (jailtime, and a taser to the bollocks, if you ask be, because you don't steal another dudes car. That's just not cool).

EDIT:
I guess my view is affected by me being Danish, because I don't see this as "one case" (why would you even look at it as one case?), but rather "two cases".

Case 1:
Silly goose forgot to lock his car, which allowed a car-thief to steal it.

Punishment: Harmless Ridicule

Case 2:
Dickhead car-thief steals a car.

Punishment (if in Denmark, and a first time offender): 14 days of jail.

 

[jklinders]

100% of the blame for the theft is on the one who committed it. it's not like the owner did anything at all to compel the thief to steal it.

Years back an acquaintance of mine was mugged. He was paying more attention to his phone than his surroundings. The area he was in was not the safest. His lack of situational awareness does not change the fact that he was knocked over, had his phone stolen and roughed up. My complete situational awareness and caution only just kept me from being attacked in that same area during the 12 years I lived there on a couple of occasions. Had that attention failed i would still blame the attacker rather than myself. Just because it's a good idea to exercise basic cautions to avoid being the victim of a crime does not absolve the criminal if those cautions are not exercised. Thinking otherwise is pretty fucking contemptible in my opinion.

 

[Tanis]

Isn't it a bit like blaming the rape victim because s/he was drunk/wearing a short skirt?

Sure, doing something stupid (like getting drunk without your friends or leaving your car unlocked) is...well...stupid.
BUT...it ISN'T ILLEGAL.

There's an old saying that goes 'locks are there to keep honest men honest'.
I NEVER liked that saying because it's so fucking cynical about honest/decent people.

:/