After reading some discussion about it here, I played the 1948 movie, "The Bicycle Thief" online from Netflix the other night. It was all in Italian with captions across the bottom of the screen, but I really enjoyed it!

The film is about a guy with a family who is looking for work and finds a job putting up posters around Rome. The job requires him to have a bicycle, so he has to get his out of the pawn shop. Sure enough, first day on the new job, his bike is stolen. He and his son look all over town in desperation for his bike. He needs it to keep the job, to provide for his family. Finally, he's tempted to steal someone else's bike. I won't tell the rest of the story, but it got me to thinking:

How many people do you suppose are driven so low as to steal bikes, in response to their own bike being stolen? Or, are all bicycle thieves simply scumbags that ought to be executed on the spot? (I would vote for the latter)