Trivialising Crime Increases Crime!

In the 1950s, serious offences such as shoplifting could easily result in imprisonment - in a reasonable but austere gaol - even for first offenders.
That changed!
NOW shoplifting is so rife that it has had to be reclassified as a MINOR offence.
I could look at countless other offences 'through the same glasses.'
So. Is our crime-ridden society really a better place for all the efforts of the do-gooders in the last half century?