$500 was the damages that they were caught doing. Not the total damages they caused. If every "empathetic" person volunteers to pay $2 every time someone wants graffiti on their property removed, regardless of how often graffiti keeps reappearing, then maybe the DA wouldn't feel a need to prosecute.
What? after reading your first sentence many times it’s basically saying you’re of the mind that a criminal very likely has way more crimes that we’ve just haven’t seen so they should be prosecuted heavily for the one we did see just to make sure we get our prosecution-bang for the buck?
Not sure where you got that idea. No where did I express interest in punishing the perpetrator for anything more than what they were caught. My point is that their "solution" to justice does not solve vandalism the way that it they think it does.
Do you seriously believe that this person only tagged once in their life and got caught the first time? Even they just happened to be very unlucky, do you think they would never do it again? I'm not talking about how the law should treat them. They should still receive a punishment fit for a $500 crime. The person responded claimed this was a waste of everyone's time and money, but that's missing the point. If the vandal has absolute no consequences they have no incentive to stop.
