Legal Money Illusion

The state of Virginia is raising the financial threshold for defining a theft as a felony for the first time in almost four decades. Virginia’s experience highlights a peculiarity of American criminal law that results in petty criminals in many states being charged and punished as if they were big-time criminals.

For property crimes such as theft or vandalism, states set financial thresholds that are intended to differentiate low-level crimes chargeable as misdemeanors from more serious offenses chargeable as felonies. In Virginia, the legislature in 1980 defined theft as a felony if the property stolen was worth more than $200. Because of inflation, more and more petty thefts that were originally defined as misdemeanors became felonies with each subsequent year. In 2017, someone who shoplifted a $240 pair of eyeglasses that would have cost only $80 in 1980 would be charged as a felon — even though that was not the law’s original intent. A felony charge can result in a petty criminal receiving a prison term, being barred from many occupations and in some states losing the right to vote.

Virginia is raising its felony standard to $500.

That is from Keith Humphreys at WaPo, note that Alaska uses indexing.

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