Even in the eyes of the law they are different.
You sure you don’t see a difference between stealing a matchbox car and having your child molested?
If one demographic is shoplifting and the other is molesting your child, which would concern you most?
Obviously, child molestation would be the greater concern but I’m not the person who brought something as trivial as matchbox cars.
If I *own* a store in a mall and a certain group of people are known to shoplift things like sneakers, iPads, jewelry, etc. perhaps you can see a greater equivalency.
But we’re straying off topic. The study is informative and appears to be well-researched. After years of listening to liberals twist polls, I just have an immediate negative reaction to phrases like “10 times more likely” that make one think a problem is epidemic when it probably isn’t.