This will serve as a wishlist for our Hawaii State Legislature to concentrate on in 2022.
1. Crime across the nation is a bigger epidemic than Covid-19. Stop making the state safe for criminals and dangerous for law abiding citizens. What taxes do criminals pay? (Oh, crooks pay bribes to government officials.) Change the law so that any thefts over $250 are considered class C felonies, and multiple thefts accumulating to an amount over $250 should also fall into this category. An honest citizen who puts a small item in his/her shopping bag and forgetting to pay for this at a checkout line is given a pass if the evidence indicates they were not really intending to steal the item. Most thieves fall into the smash and grab, or bulk grab category.
https://www.khon2.com/local-news/shoplifting-on-the-rise-in-hawaii-with-thieves-becoming-more-brazen/ 2. Stealing U.S. mail is a felony under Federal law (18 U.S. Code § 1708). This law should be modified so that any property tagged with an owner’s name/address, UPC code, and an anti-left device can result in a thief being prosecuted for a felony under state or federal law. I have always recommended dye packs which explode one minute after an alarm is triggered, if the security device has not been reset. Engineering a device with a low failure rate would be the hard part, but Home Depot would not have to put it on every box for it to be an effective deterrent.
3. The Federal government should have focused on passing a National Anti-Crime Infrastructure (NACI) bill in 2021. The state and Federal government could provide tax credits for business and home owners to add streaming 1K and 4K cameras. I am not generally in favor of a big brother government, but if you really want to stop crime, evidence collection is critical, and a National ID system with fingerprints is the most cost effective solution. In Hawaii, the gubmint already has thumb prints for most drivers. It is nearly impossible to travel by air without a state ID. China has demonstrated that facial recognition is super effective in identifying who is in a given location at a given time. A chip in a National ID card might also work in conjunction with the other ideas mentioned.
4. I hear that Siberia has plenty of room. Instead of transporting our criminals to expensive mainland prisons, ship them to Russia. Anyone have objections to this idea?