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Notes -
Deterrence of what? If the problem in San Francisco wasn't shoplifting but truck hijacking, do you think cracking down on shoplifting by busting a few people who weren't shoplifting but didn't have proper receipts would have any effect on truck hijacking?
Yes, in the following scenario: there have been no prosecutions of either shoplifting or truck hijacking for a while. The prosecution of several cases of shoplifting regardless of the merits of the individual shoplifting cases may have a deterrent effect on truck hijacking, because it signals that prosecutions of truck hijackings may follow.
How big a deterrent effect? Very uncertain; deterrent effects are hard to measure in any case. But the deterrence mechanism is present, and operates on the margins in any case.
Or it signals that prosecutors are too lazy to pursue truck hijackings, so they're going after shopliftings just to make it look like they're trying. If your goal is deterring truck hijackings, you could just prosecute truck hijackings instead of pursuing something orthogonal in the hopes that maybe it sends a signal to all the truck hijackers out there.
There are many possible readings of the hypothetical, which probably all occur across the population in question, in varying proportions. Deterrence signaling is inherently lossy; it works at the margins. If 5% of the target audience believes the framing I suggested, then deterrence theorists say, "Yay, we got 5% that we wouldn't have had otherwise" not "Damn, we didn't get 100%." Critiquing a deterrence strategy by saying it didn't send a signal to "all" the truck hijackers is an attack that doesn't land--that's not how deterrence ever works.
In this case, I think your reading is less likely to be apt, because the observed prosecutor behavior is in the wrong direction--the status quo was zero prosecutions of either shoplifting or truck hijacking. If you're going to support a "prosecutors are lazy" rationale, you need to fill in what's motivating any new prosecutions at all. If they weren't doing anything in the first place, who is providing the incentive to "make it look like they're trying"? Laziness by itself explains the status quo, but predicts that it will continue.
"Hey these complaints are not going away soon and we have an election for a new DA coming up, can you just make it look like we solved the problem? Thx"
Either way, I don't really see the utility of meticulously detailing this hypothetical. The obvious question of "why not prosecute truck hijackings?" remains, and dodging the question with "well maybe prosecuting shopliftings might end up deterring truck hijackings" is not convincing.
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