I agree that there’s a systemic problem at the root cause of this and, of course, I agree they’re a fraction of a fraction in size.
However, I don’t think we take that attribute with any other crimes, big or small, right or wrong.
I hope we can agree that a lot of theft is a symptom of the problems caused by systemicpoverty. However, it wouldn’t excuse theft, simply because you wanted a bit more, despite already having enough.
Not just you, by any stretch of the imagination, but we’re so quick to minimise the wrong doing of wealthy people doing illegal stuff to make just a little bit more money for themselves, purely out of greed. I feel like we’ve been almost groomed into some kind of “Well that’s just good business” mentality, for this ne specific kind of law breaking.
Even if it was a starving person, we would say “I understand they’re starving. However, we also can’t have them stealing everything they want to eat from one small, family owned mini mart, all the time. Yeah, yeah, no I still think that even though doing something about it might not contribute that much to the wider, systemic issues leading to poverty.”