An idea to reduce porch piracy

So as it is every year around Christmas people in my neighborhood have porch pirates plucking packages from people’s porches. I was reading in our district neighborhood group about three just in the past week, which means significantly more because not everyone’s in the group, and it will be weeks before some figure out that a friend sent them a gift that never arrived.

So I had an idea.

Porch pirates generally, at least in our area, are drive-by view and grab, take elsewhere (usually an alley,) open and discard the packaging and leave. They then sell online or through other channels.

As it’s a crime of opportunity, why not make it a crime with a very low chance of success by repackaging things like dirt, books you might want to offer them, full water bottles, etc. Then leave the package on your porch in plain view all the time.

I mean, leave a package with the wrong address printed on it so they can’t easily come back to return your rocks through your window (not that I suspect they would as you’ll report when you get pirated,) and remember when they discover this is garbage they’re going to dump it in an alley or someone’s back yard, so no uranium, cat litter, poop, etc. that you don’t want an unsuspecting neighbor to have to deal with.

Drop the success rate from porch piracy from 100% to 20% and see what happens in your neighborhood.

Or maybe I’m missing something, in which case let me know.

Pocketables does not accept targeted advertising, phony guest posts, paid reviews, etc. Help us keep this way with support on Patreon!