I am an acquaintance of the family of a 29 year old male coworker. I had been originally been led to assume that the "child" had had one or two casual juvenile problems (ie theft from a retail outlet while an employee, theft of parents credit card when somewhat older, another theft as an employee when no longer a juvenile, stealing and returning items from another retail place); however, it appears that he is continuing this pattern of behaviour and has again just recently been found to be in a position where he has to repay a previous employer back $75.00 per week for an unspecified period of time He has gone onto another employer (there have been very many) employer (his previous one only found out about the missing sums of money on his leaving and not being around to keep it covered up) where he stolen some personal property belonging to an anonymous person and sold these item(s), during his working hours, to a coworker who was also on the clock.

When he had a less than pleasant relationship with another one of his previous employers over the past year, some member of his family spoke in a rather vindictive manner regarding the individual(s) in this small company (taking the son's side). It appears that, again, this was a situation in which the employer had every right to react much more severely than was done

It does seem that the child in question has a history of theft (personally stole money from myself as well as jewelry); however, nobody is doing anything about this. I feel that, ethically, his family members, as they are providing him with a name as a character reference, due to the fact that he has none of his own, are definitely enabling this behaviour.

I feel that this individual will go on and just find more unwitting victims. He did have to undertake community service as a juvenile but since then has been getting off through either the family member digging him out or, sometimes, the employer (as well as others) are not able to completely prove that it was HE that did the theft, etc., as he tends to blame this on others (although in one of the last scenarios he has agreed to the repayment of some of the monies back to an employer)

What can be done to protect the public at large? Public censure has absolutely no effect on this individual nor does he, it appear, seem to have any kind of loyalties to anyone but rather seems to actually enjoy his activities. In fact, he very blatantly told me about a number of things that he had done in the past. I believe he is doing this to annoy me even more, having stolen from me, knowing this goes absolutely against all I believe in. I did not notify the police regarding the rather substantial theft originally due to consideration to one of his family members; however, now of course this is some months past. The individual in question has told me "if people leave things around to get stolen it's their own fault" . He has a very vengeful attitude toward his victims that have attempted to anything legally against him.

Can anything be done about this in order to restrict his future endeavours?