All I'm saying is that the biggest causal factor in petty crime is poverty.
Antiseptic,
Unfortunately there are people who because of others are poor. We're not talking about them. We're talking about indecent & criminal people who are too lazy to put in an effort to make a Dollar so they take the the easy & far more thrilling route of theft & assault. Now, if the victim were to be allowed to retaliate then the number of crims would naturally be reduced very quickly. However, the academic do-gooder infiltrating the law brigade who need to satisfy their perverse needs of seeing innocent people suffer are persecuting the course of justice at every turn. Low life criminal defence Lawyers edge into politics & you get what we have, a dysfunctional society held to ransom by the prospect of persecution.
Where are the decent defence lawyers & the funding to support the victim ?
If the situation is not reigned in soon vigilantism will will rise with a vengeance.

individual - Where are the decent defence lawyers & the funding to support the victim ?

The words 'decent' & 'lawyer' are for the most part mutually exclusive. Basically if there aren't multiple pots of gold involved, lawyers aren't interested. There is a certain high profile lawyer who is wont to crap on about civil liberties. I'm aware of a person who requested this leech write a simple letter. Response was 'gimme a thousand bucks & we'll think about whether or not we'll take you on, and if so we'll want $1500 per hour up front, and incidentially if we do accept the job it will be attended to by a minion ... the great man is far too busy to attend to such trivial clients'

Indi, yes, I'd agree that some people are basically no-hopers. I've had one as a flatmate for the past 3 years, but he's by no means criminally inclined.

The thing is that it's hard to work out which direction the causation runs. Does someone who does poorly at school or acquires a king-size chip on their shoulder while there who then can't get reliable work and becomes a petty crook simply express their nature, or are they responding to circumstances or some psychological kink?

I reckon in most cases its one of the latter and that the proverbial bum who wouldn't work in an iron lung is pretty rare.

Another factor is that petty crime is a pretty hard row to hoe these days. It's hardly worth the effort of carting off consumer electronics and what with surveillance and the panoply of modern policing it's not going to be long before the petty crook is looking at the world through a set of bars.

On top of that, people don't carry cash much any more and it's a big leap from pinchng a wallet to forcing someone to disclose a PIN, both conceptually and in the penalty it attracts.

Then there's the fact that the workforce participation rate is below 70%, meaning that 1/3 or thereabouts of people are not even regarded as part of the workforce, but get DSP or some other undemanding benefit. Being a hard worker is becoming something of a novelty.

In a nutshell, it's cheaper to give them the dole and buy some more cameras than worry about whether they're pinching the loose change.

it's cheaper to give them the dole
Antseptic,
that's academic reasoning & of extreme short-term effectiveness. To counter & improve the ability of people to become more useful to themselves & others & most importantly, offer people the opportunity to regain self-esteem only one option exists & that option is National Service.
Those who deliberately will not see the benefits of a Nat Serv are no better than the maggots who call themselves defence lawyer & civil libertarians. Most normal people are in fact in favour of Nat Serv as much as the do-gooders try to disprove it.
One of the great dilemma of our generation is the mentality of 'if they have it I want it too'.
Our education system is the culprit in nurturing this mentality. No-one's taught respect, decency, responsibility etc. why many teachers can't even spell. Teachers above all should be made to attend Nat Serv before they are permitted into a class room. Just remember this, better education results in better people.

individual

National Service for **ALL** would indeed be a brilliant idea, providing it involved 'proper' discipline administered by the old school RSM type with a voice easily sufficient to raise the dead. There is absolutely no point of a system embodying contemporary 'kids have rights' male bovine dropping, it needs to have teeth that make a sabre-toothed tiger look like a pussycat ... no educated idiot do-gooders allowed within a thousand kilometers. Unlike the previous half-baked event at the time of the Vietnam war, ability for the favoured few to cop-out needs to be squashed. This just might knock some semblance of decency into those destined to become banksters, captains of industry, legal leeches and / or bloodsucking parasite politicians.

indi, I'm not sure how National Service fits into what I said, or what it would avail. By all accounts the bikie gangs of the 80s and 90s were full of ex nashos.

It's a nice idea to be able to take a person who is barely able to take responsibility for finding the toilet to defecate and turn their life around, but it's fanciful. Besides, as I pointed out above, there's not much point in making a young bloke all job ready if there's no jobs for him to do, which is fast becoming the case as male employment continues to decline with no sign of slowing.

I agree with you vis a vis the sense of entitlement that seems to pervade our culture, but I think you're looking in the wrong direction.