If someone pick pocketed your wallet or stole your jacket and was caught by the police, would you still prosecute them if they were at all apologetic? A friend of mine is wrestling with this question, a few days ago some guy stole her cell phone that she sat on the counter of a restaurant and ran off. When security caught him minutes later, he acted very remorseful and said he needed to make a call, didn't have money to use the payphone and had been rejected by several strangers to use their phone. Now she's all perplexed on if she should press charges.

I agree. Not really buying the needed to "make a call" story. Did he have an emergency? Unless he needed to call the cops or an ambulance then he needed to just wait to make his call. He was apologetic because he got caught. She should press charges. He won't learn anything by getting away with it.

If he did it once he is surely going to do it again, especially if he saw he got away with it by playing apologetic.
I would let the law handle it.

Someone getting away with thievery won't learn a lesson, they'll just do it again. On top of that, some sort of punishment needs to inflicted for pulling such a lowdown stunt, so even if they were apologetic, I would still most likely press charges.

The guy's story doesn't fly with me either. But if I was in that situation, I would just let it go and not press charges. And the reason for that is that I wouldn't want to live in fear of the thief wanting to get even with me. I may be incorrect, but for me to press charges in such a situation, it would make the thief privy to my name and location, if not exact address. So the risk of him continuing his reckless behavior by exacting revenge wouldn't be worth it to me.

For the original question, I don’t know…probably not. In general would depend on the circumstances.

It just depends on if I believed their story or not, and I don't believe that one.

The story sounds completely bogus. I have a hard time imagining the guy not being able to convince anyone to let him use their phone if his situation were that dire; it's not that serious. To grab a phone and then run just sounds like a thief trying to get his jollies by taking something that doesn't belong to him.

I'd press charges for sure.

I'm with everyone else. I don't buy his story. If he just needed to make a call, he could have asked her, stood there and made his call, and handed it back rather than run off with it. Seems to me he's more remorseful about getting caught than stealing his phone. Reminds me of a story a friend told me. She was rear-ended by an old guy who begged her not to call the insurance companies. He gave a sob story, seemed remorseful, and offered to pay for it. She didn't want to take a chance and called insurance anyway. Turned out the guy had caused something like 10 other collisions and was in danger of loosing his license, though I wonder why it took them that long to look into things, anyway. He didn't want her to go to the insurance company, because this was his last chance. I'd let the police deal with the cast. If the guy truly just needed to make a call, he could have asked her for change and used a pay phone or asked to use the restaurant phone. The guy is a thief.

Shale wrote:

Were the police called? It would be a crime once they were called and all your friend would be is a witness. IDK. I would have to weigh my inconvenience going to court with this, but it would be a disservice to the thief not to take him to the authorities.

Bullshit with "I had to make a call." He stole a cell phone. Had he outrun security your friend would have had to disconnect the old phone, buy a new one maybe change the phone #. I would not sympathize with the thief and likely go thru the legal process as a civic duty to keep this thief from knowing he could just get away with it.

This happened inside the mall, the security caught the guy and the police were called called. There were witnesses and also a security camera. The guy was hauled off to jail about an hour later.