What liability is provided for the theft of property?

– The most common administrative offense against property is petty theft. For committing petty theft, administrative liability is provided for – Art. 11.1 of the Code of the Republic of Belarus on Administrative Offenses, the sanction of which provides for a fine of two to thirty basic units, or community service, or administrative arrest, regardless of the value of the stolen item, for example, even if it is chewing gum.

Petty theft is, although not the most dangerous, but the most common type of offense against property. In essence, petty theft and larceny are two forms of the same unlawful act. And if the law provides for administrative liability for the former, then for the latter – criminal liability.

Petty theft, like larceny, is the unlawful gratuitous appropriation of another's property for selfish motives. One of the most important differences between petty theft and larceny is the size or value of the stolen item. If we are talking about the property of a legal entity, then we can talk about petty theft if the amount or value of the stolen item does not exceed 10 times the basic unit established on the day the act was committed (with the exception of the theft of an order, medal of the Republic of Belarus, USSR or BSSR, a badge of honor of the Republic of Belarus, USSR or BSSR). The theft of property of an individual is considered petty if the amount or value of the stolen item does not exceed 2 times the basic unit established on the day the act was committed, with the exception of the theft of an order, medal, badge of honor, or theft committed by a group of persons, or by larceny committed from clothing or hand luggage that was on the victim, or by breaking and entering into a dwelling. If the value of the stolen item exceeds the aforementioned amounts, then the act is considered a crime, and the guilty person is punished in accordance with the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, namely under Art. 205 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus.

Most often, petty theft is committed in stores, agricultural production cooperatives, and food and processing industry enterprises. From stores, "buyers" steal alcoholic beverages, candies, sausages, and small household goods. At processing industry enterprises, offenses are usually committed by employees who have a "demand" for their own products. At agricultural enterprises, grown products and feed are "popular".

The most attractive for criminals engaged in petty theft are large stores, such as, for example, "Euroopt", where they expect to go unnoticed among a large number of people.

The most effective measure for preventing theft is equipping retail facilities, storage areas for goods and materials, and places of mass gathering of citizens with video surveillance systems. As practice shows, recordings made by cameras are very useful to police officers and, as a rule, allow them to expose offenders.

Store and enterprise employees are primarily interested in preventing petty theft. After all, in the final analysis, it is they who will have to compensate for the cost of stolen goods if the perpetrator is not found. However, any honest person has no right to indifferently turn away upon noticing that theft is being committed. Crime prevention is a common task for all concerned people.