Stuart P. GreenThinkers

Looting is best not punished more harshly than other crimes for those engaged in it come in three waves, with the professionals in first, next alienated youths and the unemployed, and last the working poor caught up in the hysteria.

Looting is an act that not only shakes the confidence we feel in our social institutions but, perhaps more generally, it shakes the faith we have in our fellow human beings.

Looting is disturbing because it reminds us of the apparent fragility of our own social contract. It is the product of an inversion of moral norms in which what is normally illicit becomes licit. Lawlessness is not only tolerated, but encouraged. Looting shakes the confidence we feel in our social institutions and, perhaps more generally, the faith we have in our fellow human beings. For these reasons, heightened penalties seem appropriate for at least certain acts of looting.

Looting is viewed as so awful because it causes destruction, fear, and resentment in their neighbors at the moment they are most in need, aggravating the misery and the anxiety that the triggering disaster has already caused.

Looting is so powerful in the public consciousness because it is an act marked by greed and opportunism and cruelty and monetary gain precisely at times when caring and kindness and self-sacrifice are most needed.