Now they target customers at the counter

[dannyb]

There is an old saying in industry that you can have it good, fast, cheap... pick 2. That is a solid part of the argument here. You can have it good and fast, ie you can have an arrested criminal tried with all rights preserved and a multitude of investigators and litigators etc. to make sure that the evidence is gathered and adequately processed quickly, but it won't be cheap by any means. You can have a fast and cheap system like the black laws of England with its parade of hangings at Tyburn and its even bigger parade of populating colonies with those whose sentences were commuted to transportation; but I don't think that executing people for property crime will fly today no matter how romantic it sounds. And finally we have good and relatively cheap, something like we actually do have. Most criminals plead, the budget is spared the expense of trials, and an overloaded system chugs away. It's not the best, but it's certainly not the worst either.