You are only seeing the cases that make it to the courthouse, right? How many shoplifting events are ignored, missed, or otherwise let off before things make it that far? OK, there is no discretion on the cases they allow into court but there is a hell of a lot of discretion before things get to that point.
This is correct in the sense that the police have the ability to "let someone off with a warning," or loss prevention/the cashier can look the other way, but my statement applies to any case where someone gets a ticket or is arrested. That's where the ratchet starts to tighten.
In the case of habitual, high-volume retail theft like in the article, people seem to be eventually arrested at a pretty fast clip, though it's obviously impossible to know the rate.
