Kids were expected to make mistakes and grown-ups were expected to forgive them. Adults were encouraged not to overreact. There are no exceptions. These policies are so unforgiving that some stores will actually call the police if they catch a five year old pocketing a piece of gum. It seems unlikely, therefore, that much mercy would be shown to a seven year old cracker thief.
Merchants suffer tremendous losses from shoplifting.
One would be hard pressed to blame them for deciding to get tough. However, while treating a kindergartner like a hardened criminal may make business sense, it is not, of course, necessarily the right thing to do. But this get-tough attitude prevails, and nowhere is this more evident than in the field of juvenile justice. Most important, the age at which a child can be tried as an adult has been lowered in state after state. Correctional systems across the country are being forced to confront the issue of what to do with kids as young as thirteen or fourteen years of age who have been sentenced to serve long stretches in adult prisons.