7 ms·

But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. Then u

But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. Then using RFID or similar technology, you could embed a RFID tag somewhere in the frame. Then allow someone to report a stolen bike with a police report, very similar to a stolen vehicle report and then using remote scanners you could scan for stolen bikes very easily. All it takes is fear of a stolen bike to scare away potential buyers.

danielweber 14y ago
Can you make an RFID tag that you can embed in the bike such that it's easy to scan at a small distance, but also hard for the thieves to fry it or remove it? Because in order to be successful it would be to be standardized and if standardized the thieves would fry it if easy.
- buro9 14y ago
  Yes. Already exists: https://www.immobilise.com/view.php?stage=product&category=1&product=2 https://www.immobilise.com/view.php?stage=product&catego... Goes down the seat tube and is a one-way insert only. Cannot be pulled back out, and is too large to push down and get out of the bottom bracket shell. I actually have those installed in all my bikes. Far simpler though: Every one of my bikes is littered with very small notes saying "If this bike was not brought into the shop by David Kitchen it is stolen, please call 07740949xxx". Those notes are in the stem, under the bar tape, under the rim tape, in the bottom bracket shell, in the seat tube, in the seat post. Everywhere you can hide a small note whilst building the bike that will be found when servicing the bike. I printed them on plastic using a Dymo machine, they weigh nothing... and if my bikes were stolen then one day they will arrive in a bike store for a service, and be returned to me.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    That sounds great. Now you need volunteers who run readers everywhere and upload them to a common website. People can see where their bike shows up.
- lancewiggs 14y ago
  http://Taggle.com.au http://Taggle.com.au (I'm an investor) has a small device that allows remote tracking of assets like bicycles for years without an external power supply. The tiny devices broadcast a low powered wide spectrum ping every 20 mins to 1 hour and very smart receivers triangulate to provide coordinates. The transmitters can also send data, generally a meter reading or if a secure element is broken. Taggle Systems are focussing first on remote reading of water meters and other water utility use cases, but once networks are in place then tracking bikes will be doable.
jseliger 14y ago
But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. In legal terms, you'd have a problem with proportionality—that is, the idea that the punishment needs to fit the crime. This is partially a problem with fairness and partially a problem with incentives: if you give someone the same punishment for, say, stealing a bike and for beating someone up, then if you want to steal someone's bike you might as well beat them up to steal the bike. If you follow this logic, you eventually get to something like 18th C England, where a LOT of stuff was punishable by death, which led to large problems with murder: if you're going to be killed for stealing, you might as well kill someone, then steal, since you've just eliminated the witness.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Making possession a crime at the level of first party theft doesn't have this problem.
- checker 14y ago
  Your example doesn't apply because death is the ceiling. It's impossible to kill someone twice, so ultimately it makes no difference to the criminal. However, if the criminal gets 5 years for stealing a bike, and 10 years for beating someone up, the criminal might be swayed by 5 years vs 15 years. I can see the situation where the criminal thinks "I'm already probably going to jail, might as well decrease my chances as much as possible" by beating someone up. I think most bike crimes occur when the owner isn't around though.
  - pyoung 14y ago
    You are not taking into account concurrent sentencing. So if the punishment for stealing a bike was 5, and if assault was also 5, the guy would only serve 5. Theoretically at least.
- smackfu 14y ago
  Or you end up with Singapore, which just has very strict punishments for minor crimes.
Cass 14y ago
The US already proportionally has the most prisoners out of any country in the world, and I'm wary of any solution that includes making that problem worse. That kind of thing has giant socioeconomic costs and, looking at the crime rates, doesn't seem to work at making the country safer. I just don't think that finding yet another reason to put a whole bunch of people in prison (average cost per month between $2000 and $4000 at a quick google) over a bike worth $1000 is really going to make anything better in the long run.
- dmm 14y ago
  The US also has a lot of crime. More people need to be in prison.
  - spacemanaki 14y ago
    Care to back that up? Does the US really have that much more crime that justifies locking up more people? Recent stuff I've read on this agrees with Cass (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120...).
    - tylee78 14y ago
      compared to Germany the percentage of criminals seems the same - it's just that our criminals are on the streets, yours in prison.
    - pfedor 14y ago
      dmm's point was made by several people in the comments thread for the very article you cite, some of them quoting statistics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 tl;dr: In the U.S. in only 20% of murder cases the perpetrator is found and convicted of murder, compared with (allegedly) 90% in Japan. At the same time, even if all non-violent offenders (that includes all drug offenses) were released from prisons in the U.S. tomorrow, the U.S. would still have double the incarceration rate of Western Europe. I don't know enough to have an opinion either way, but intuitively this message has a true ring to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583

danielweber 14y ago

Can you make an RFID tag that you can embed in the bike such that it's easy to scan at a small distance, but also hard for the thieves to fry it or remove it? Because in order to be successful it would be to be standardized and if standardized the thieves would fry it if easy.

buro9 14y ago
Yes. Already exists: https://www.immobilise.com/view.php?stage=product&category=1&product=2 https://www.immobilise.com/view.php?stage=product&catego... Goes down the seat tube and is a one-way insert only. Cannot be pulled back out, and is too large to push down and get out of the bottom bracket shell. I actually have those installed in all my bikes. Far simpler though: Every one of my bikes is littered with very small notes saying "If this bike was not brought into the shop by David Kitchen it is stolen, please call 07740949xxx". Those notes are in the stem, under the bar tape, under the rim tape, in the bottom bracket shell, in the seat tube, in the seat post. Everywhere you can hide a small note whilst building the bike that will be found when servicing the bike. I printed them on plastic using a Dymo machine, they weigh nothing... and if my bikes were stolen then one day they will arrive in a bike store for a service, and be returned to me.
- danielweber 14y ago
  That sounds great. Now you need volunteers who run readers everywhere and upload them to a common website. People can see where their bike shows up.
lancewiggs 14y ago
http://Taggle.com.au http://Taggle.com.au (I'm an investor) has a small device that allows remote tracking of assets like bicycles for years without an external power supply. The tiny devices broadcast a low powered wide spectrum ping every 20 mins to 1 hour and very smart receivers triangulate to provide coordinates. The transmitters can also send data, generally a meter reading or if a secure element is broken. Taggle Systems are focussing first on remote reading of water meters and other water utility use cases, but once networks are in place then tracking bikes will be doable.

jseliger 14y ago

But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. In legal terms, you'd have a problem with proportionality—that is, the idea that the punishment needs to fit the crime. This is partially a problem with fairness and partially a problem with incentives: if you give someone the same punishment for, say, stealing a bike and for beating someone up, then if you want to steal someone's bike you might as well beat them up to steal the bike. If you follow this logic, you eventually get to something like 18th C England, where a LOT of stuff was punishable by death, which led to large problems with murder: if you're going to be killed for stealing, you might as well kill someone, then steal, since you've just eliminated the witness.

Evbn 14y ago
Making possession a crime at the level of first party theft doesn't have this problem.
checker 14y ago
Your example doesn't apply because death is the ceiling. It's impossible to kill someone twice, so ultimately it makes no difference to the criminal. However, if the criminal gets 5 years for stealing a bike, and 10 years for beating someone up, the criminal might be swayed by 5 years vs 15 years. I can see the situation where the criminal thinks "I'm already probably going to jail, might as well decrease my chances as much as possible" by beating someone up. I think most bike crimes occur when the owner isn't around though.
- pyoung 14y ago
  You are not taking into account concurrent sentencing. So if the punishment for stealing a bike was 5, and if assault was also 5, the guy would only serve 5. Theoretically at least.
smackfu 14y ago
Or you end up with Singapore, which just has very strict punishments for minor crimes.

Cass 14y ago

The US already proportionally has the most prisoners out of any country in the world, and I'm wary of any solution that includes making that problem worse. That kind of thing has giant socioeconomic costs and, looking at the crime rates, doesn't seem to work at making the country safer. I just don't think that finding yet another reason to put a whole bunch of people in prison (average cost per month between $2000 and $4000 at a quick google) over a bike worth $1000 is really going to make anything better in the long run.

dmm 14y ago
The US also has a lot of crime. More people need to be in prison.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  Care to back that up? Does the US really have that much more crime that justifies locking up more people? Recent stuff I've read on this agrees with Cass (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120...).
  - tylee78 14y ago
    compared to Germany the percentage of criminals seems the same - it's just that our criminals are on the streets, yours in prison.
  - pfedor 14y ago
    dmm's point was made by several people in the comments thread for the very article you cite, some of them quoting statistics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372 tl;dr: In the U.S. in only 20% of murder cases the perpetrator is found and convicted of murder, compared with (allegedly) 90% in Japan. At the same time, even if all non-violent offenders (that includes all drug offenses) were released from prisons in the U.S. tomorrow, the U.S. would still have double the incarceration rate of Western Europe. I don't know enough to have an opinion either way, but intuitively this message has a true ring to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583