Looting is often associated with natural disasters or emergencies in a state. In 2005, one of the strongest hurricanes, later named “Katrina,” occurred in the United States. The primary damage was caused to the port city of New Orleans, in which, as a result, about 700 thousand people were left homeless (Koven & Brennan, 2017). In the first days after the disaster, most police were involved in search and rescue operations and could not properly maintain law and order in the dilapidated city. In this regard, the crime rate has risen, and looting has become a major problem for US citizens. The solution to this problem was the introduction of the National Guard troops, sent to restore law and order in the city. They were allowed to use firearms against persons committing socially dangerous acts.
Analyzing this case, we see that the US authorities resorted to a rather radical way to solve the problem of looting; however, this method proved effective. In a reasonably short time, law and order were restored. However, it is essential to note that this problem-solving tactic was utilized in the context of a natural disaster’s consequences. The impact of Katrina caused severe destruction and further paralyzed the everyday work of the police so that they could not cope with their duties (Hancock et al., 2021). Therefore, only the use of force could stop crime and damage.
In general, I believe that looting really should be punished more severely than theft or robbery usually. Based on the example described above, it is clear that the standard procedure of reaction and prosecution would hardly have contributed to the restoration of the state (Sun, 2018). Moreover, in emergencies, you need to act quickly, so any complication and differentiation in the level of seriousness of a crime can cost civil safety. Therefore, I believe that any act of looting to take advantage of an unstable situation at a critical moment for selfish purposes should be punished equally seriously.
References
Hancock, M., Halim, N., Kuhlman, C. J., Marathe, A., Mozumder, P., Ravi, S. S., & Vullikanti, A. (2021, November). Effect of peer influence and looting concerns on evacuation behavior during natural disasters. In International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications (pp. 377-389). Springer, Cham.
Koven, S. G., & Brennan, M. (2017). Hurricane Katrina. Crisis and Emergency Management: Theory and Practice, 349.
Sun, L. G. (2018). Disaster law and order. In Research Handbook on Climate Disaster Law. Edward Elgar Publishing.