When is stealing not stealing

Depending on the type of charges you face, you may end up in a local jail or a federal prison. Tennessee law defines shoplifting as the theft of property from a merchant; it is always handled by local or state courts. Larceny, burglary and robbery can be charged by the state or the federal government.

Whereas shoplifting, larceny, burglary, and robbery are overt and physical, embezzlement is subtler, and classified as a form of white-collar theft. Embezzlement charges are often handled at the federal level as well and are prosecuted under broad wire fraud or mail fraud statutes. If a person commits theft, the penalties he or she faces depends on the value of the stolen property and the type of theft he or she committed. Whichever way you slice it, theft is illegal, and the penalties for theft are serious.

Are they significant? Should they be allowed to justify stealing or aggression? Having had severe behavioral problems himself as a child, he was inspired to focus on behavioral management professionally. Together with his wife, Janet Lehman, he developed an approach to managing children and teens that challenges them to solve their own problems without hiding behind disrespectful, obnoxious or abusive behavior.

Empowering Parents now brings this insightful and impactful program directly to homes around the globe. You must log in to leave a comment. Don't have an account? Create one for free! I have noticed in the last visits of my step daughter that she is stealing my makeup. She is 13 and lives with her mom in England and we live in wales, she comes for a week visit once in a month. I make week food plan and cook her favourite meals. I noticed that she has taken not just my clothes but also my makeup which I loved.

I informed my husband and he spoke with her mom, her mom said that we have a face to face chat with her when she visits next time. How do we deal with her? Thank you for reaching out. Stealing can be a troubling behavior to deal with. It can help to recognize that stealing is more of a poor problem solving skill than anything else.

We appreciate you being part of our Empowering Parents community. Be sure to check back and let us know how things are going. I have a nine year old daughter who is currently being treated with Lupron injections for Precocious Puberty.

So my nine year old has the physical appearance of a 14 year old and an attitude to match! She has been under successful treatment now for two years. However, recently she is becoming more defiant. She has begun to physically attack me when displeased with me or sometimes for no apparent reason at all. For now, I can keep her at bay until she calms down with out hurting her or myself but I am really afraid for our future when the day comes that she can overpower me.

My nine year old is 5'5 and lbs and I am 5'7 and lbs. The day will arrive soon when she will be able to overpower me. My husband although he lives in the same house is not at all supportive. In fact, he witnesses her attacking me with no reaction which I believe empowers her to do even more harm to me.

I have not reached out to our Pediatrician yet but I am quickly approaching a dangerous place. I want to help my daughter but I just don't know where to start. Would it be our Pediatrician, a Phsycaitrist, Psychologist or the Police? Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am at a loss and truly want to help and understand my daughter's behavior. I have fOster child 14 who stole twenty dollars and a ph from a locked safe at boarding school.

She is being sent home tomorrow for 3days. I asked school to ring police but they wont. Partly as a result of this particular commandment and the impact of Christianity upon social custom in many parts of the world, the message that stealing is a moral wrong is pervasive and fairly uncontroversial, at least prima facie. For example, if you hear that someone has been sent to prison for stealing, it would likely take something atypical for you to question whether or not the person deserved punishment for his or her crime.

In this chapter, we apply the key normative theories of Kantian Ethics, Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics to the issue of stealing. For example, we might wonder if it is possible to steal an item even though the owner has given you consent to take it. The original definition would rule this out as a conceptual impossibility, but consider someone who, whilst inebriated perhaps even drugged against their will , gives you permission to take an item of value from their house.

Even though you have their explicit permission, acting on this verbal instruction and stealing their television still might seem to be an act of theft. If you play a game for real money, and beat them in hand after hand after hand, might it be suggested that you have stolen their money even though they freely entered into the game?

We might deny that either is an act of stealing, or deny that proper consent was ever given — this seems particularly compelling in the first example. However, we can also cast doubt on the definition by focussing not on the issue of consent, but on the idea of property. For example, if a person is being paid by the hour, but spends an undue amount of time on social media or checking sports scores, have they stolen money or time from their employer?

This is a genuinely important issue in the field of comedy, for example. Again, the original definition might be defensible as a mechanism for capturing such instances of stealing. However, if it is defensible, it is only because of a broad reading of the idea of property, taking the concept far beyond the physical.

If so, our reading of the original definition of stealing would again need to be rather broad. It would be best to engage with Chapter 2 before considering the application of Kantian thinking to the issue of stealing in this section.

Background knowledge of this theory is therefore assumed in what follows. According to the first formulation, if we consider the maxim behind an action the general principle that supports the action in the mind of the person acting , then we should consider whether or not that maxim could be willed to become a universal law. According to the second formulation, we should consider whether or not the action involves treating another person merely as a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.

It seems that we could not will this maxim to become a universal law, because if everyone took the property of others whenever they pleased, then whole concept of property would break down.

Thus, such a maxim could not be universalised without contradiction much like the example of breaking promises. If anyone can take any object whenever they want, then no one can truly be said to own anything. For example, if I could without moral condemnation take the pen out of your hand on the basis of the universalised maxim as described above, then there is a clear sense in which you might have been holding the pen without ever owning the pen.

If you steal from the child, then you are quite clearly not treating the child or the person caring for the child as a free and rational agent with their own dignity; on the contrary you are using them merely as a means to your own end of securing property that you desire. However, the structure of the Kantian response to this case is what really matters, for it is a structure that we can apply to other cases. Take an example of stealing that is plausibly moral defensible, perhaps involving stealing from a financially powerful and internationally influential supermarket chain in order to feed your hungry family.

The Kantian view regarding this case will be informative as to the wider response of Kantian Ethics to stealing. Can this maxim be willed to be a universal law? Well, even as it stands, there are reasons for thinking that such a maxim could not be universalised. For one, food is always strictly necessary for our survival, along with water, medical treatment and, in the modern age, some financial resource. Indeed, even someone who burgles a house to steal a television might act on such a maxim if they plan on selling that television in order to pay a debt to a potentially violent individual.

The breadth of such a universalised maxim thus brings us back to the issue that afflicted the previous maxim, and the concept of property may not survive universalisation of such a maxim.

Alasdair MacIntyre — has suggested that when it comes to applying the test of universalisation the system can be manipulated by being overly specific with the maxim. He says:. All I need to do is to characterise the proposed action in such a way that the maxim will permit me to do what I want while prohibiting others from doing what would nullify the action if universalised.

However, there is a question — as referred to in Chapter 2 when this formulation of the Categorical Imperative was explained in more detail — as to whether or not a maxim of this type could be understood as a universal law.

This is because its application would clearly not be universal in the sense that it would apply only to me or, in the case of the first maxim of this paragraph, to a limited number of desperate people. You may also mail in your contribution. Box , Washington, DC The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry AACAP represents over 9, child and adolescent psychiatrists who are physicians with at least five years of additional training beyond medical school in general adult and child and adolescent psychiatry.

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Facts sheets may not be reproduced, duplicated or posted on any other website without written consent from AACAP. Stealing in Children and Adolescents. Return to Table of Contents.