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

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Also, both are to blame. The thief for being a thief, and the car owner for being careless. Obviously you shouldn't steal cars, but it's also your responsibility to look out for your stuff. Don't leave your doors unlocked, don't leave your wallet alone, don't leave your young children unsupervised. The victim is still a victim, granted, but it doesn't absolve him of being irresponsible.

If they are at fault for the crime, what should be the charge against them? Sentence if found guilty?

 

[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?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

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?

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

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

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

According to some, apparently so.

Making a crime easier to commit doesn't change who is to blame for the crime being committed.


I think what people consistently do when considering blame is to wrongly conflate it with cause and then assign blame based on counterfactual statements.

In other words, stating that "if you hadn't left your car unlocked, it would not have been stolen" might be true but that doesn't entail that "you are to blame for your car being stolen".

This is why I answered "Partly at fault, silly goose".

I mean he is partly at fault, but it's the very small part which earns him a bit of harmless ridicule (and the grievance of having his car stolen), while the criminal blame should all fall on the thief (and I hope just for karmas sake that he gets a lawyer that shouts "STOP BREAKING THE LAW ASSHOLE").

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

 

[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?

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

What do you think criminal liability is based on?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

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

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

 

[WeepingAngels]

An unguarded person is murdered. Who's to blame.
Least that is bout the same argument in my own opinion. It's obviously the one doing the crime

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

 

[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?