[Margaret Pilkington]

I agree that there is no such thing as 'petty crime'.......and calling it this somehow makes it seem like it is less valid as a crime.
All crimes have victims.....the primary victim is the person that is robbed or mugged etc, but then there are the secondary victims of crime - the parents of the criminal, the children and partner/wife of the criminal......they are all victims.

At one time, being a criminal carried great shame for a family......and while I am not exactly sure that this is the case today, there must be parents who despair of the acts of their offspring, and wonder where it all went wrong.