Do we have any sources that people are stealing to survive? What definition of surviving are we using here?
The US tried "tough on crime" approaches, what has it resulted in? 25% of the entire world's prison population and it still has higher crime rates than its peer nations.
I think it's ok to define "survive" as an addict who needs (<-also loosely defined) a fix.
You don't generally commit serious white collar crime, tax fraud or do crypto grifts to survive. For petty street crime, I don't really see any other motivation.
Phew, good to hear. Here I thought it would be a hard and complex problem, with lots of unknown unknowns, difficult political compromises, a generation-spanning efforts and many potential solutions with uncertain outcomes, partially contradicting each other.
Instead, we just have to make society better. So, what's step 1?
And if you are still worried about theft in the mean time, you could try looking at wage thefts which has a value greater than all other forms of theft combined.