The two most likely offenses to drive Avvo readers to call or write me are drunk driving and shoplifting.  As neither is the sort of case that has ever interested me, my familiarity with the frequency and  mindset of those charged is limited.  Since I now hear about them all the time, it seems to me as if it’s an epidemic.

And it may well be, given this article in the New York Times describing how shopkeepers are changing the way they deal with shoplifting.

First, suspected shoplifters caught by the store’s security guards or staff members have their identification seized. Then, they are photographed holding up the items they are accused of trying to steal. Finally, workers at the store threaten to display the photographs to embarrass them, and to call the police — unless the accused thieves hand over money.

“We usually fine them $400,” said Tem Shieh, 60, the manager, who keeps track of customers on 30 video monitors in the store’s surveillance system. “If they don’t have the money, then we usually hold their identification and give them a chance to go get it.”

This “method” of dealing with shoplifter is another Chinese import, from the land that brought us Maoist re-education camps.  There is absolutely no aspect of this that isn’t outrageous, from the store’s untrained “security guards,” fresh off duty at Dairy Queen, deciding that they’ve nabbed the perp, to what amounts to a private kidnapping, defamation, wholessale absence of due process, and ultimately reached extortion.  They fine them?  Who is a store to fine anyone?

New York State law allows “shopkeepers’ privileges” that fall somewhere between the prerogatives of the police and a citizen’s arrest. The law also details “civil recovery statutes,” by which retailers may use the threat of a civil lawsuit to recover substantial settlements for even minor thievery. But threatening to report that someone has committed a crime can be considered a form of extortion.

You bet.  How many stories can I take about a mother with a couple of kids running around the Gap being nailed as they pass near the door by a 22 year-old, who yells so everyone in the store can hear that she’s a thief?  Taken into a “back room” and told that they must sign a confession or they won’t be allowed to leave, while their kids are alone in the store. And that’s without the Chinese enhancements.

But this new twist, public humiliation plus risk of prosecution versus paying off the extortion money, is mind-boggling.  Naturally, that means that the police and district attorney know all about it, but are doing nothing.

Neither the Police Department nor the Queens district attorney’s office said any complaints about the practice had been received. But its critics argue that the accused shoplifters are deprived of basic civil rights and the usual assurances in public legal proceedings, like the right to a lawyer and freedom from coercion, and are not being held by adequately trained security officials with proper oversight.

After all, if no one comes in to proclaim they’re an accused shoplifter who’s been the victim of shopkeeper extortion, then everybody must be happy with the system.  For the moment, this scheme is predominantly used within the Chinese community, which carries its own issues.

Many accused shoplifters plead poverty. But they usually manage to come up with money to pay their way out of being publicly shamed and arrested, Mr. Shieh said, often after calling upon friends and relatives for the cash.

Fears of being deported often color their panicked responses.

These are easy targets, disinclined to fight or complain.  Perfect pickings for an extortion scheme.  But as word spreads, and certainly this article will help it to do so, shopkeepers and store managers everywhere will learn of this extortion twist, package it up with their already deeply disturbing, coercive, manipulative scheme.  The ramifications are staggering.

The obvious plus side is that it’s a way for someone who shoplifts to avoid prosecution, avoid entanglement with the criminal justice system and the potential for a criminal record.  It’s self-help, rough justice if you will, and to some minds, a quicker, more fitting resolution to petty crime.  Yet there’s neither balance nor limit, oversight nor safeguard from abuse.  This would institutionalize the private kidnapping and extortion of people at will, whether they are really shop-lifters or not.

For the moment, the going rate is $400 to pay off the kidnappers.  What happens if it grows to $1,000?  $10,000?  What happens if the seized shopper isn’t inclined to go peaceably with the program, and they get a good tuning up by the “security guards?”  What happens to the children, left on their own while Mommy is being coerced into confessing to a crime?

But as long as no one complains, there’s certainly no reason for the police or district attorney to care whether shopkeepers are kidnapping people and extorting money from them.