Stealing

Joyce stole $1800 from our house ($1500 of which belonged to Frankie).

Frankie used to live next door and Joyce had been cleaning his house for around 6 month before he moved in with me. She had actually been cleaning that house for much longer than that. She used to clean for Katrina who lived in the house before Frankie and Shira moved in.

A distraught and desperate sounding Joyce called Frankie couple of weeks back asking for some work. Frankie, and to some extent me, felt some sense of guilt for ending her source of income when he moved in with me and we decided to ask her to come clean the house on Fridays in addition to the regular cleaner who comes on Monday.

Last Friday, she came in at 9AM and left by 10AM with $1800 cash.

Costs of stealing:
1. Reputation (R) - loss of employment with other houses
2. Jail term (J) - incarceration, loss of income, inability to care for family
3. Guilt (G) - She is not a criminal. I assume she feels very guilty about stealing from us.

Benefit of stealing:
1. Money (M)
2. ?? (Q)

So, Joyce will steal if: R + G + J < M + Q

Did Joyce make up her mind that she'd steal from us when she called Frankie? How big was the 'M' that she was hoping for. We know that it was definitely smaller than $1800:

m < M < $1800

We should not have kept that much money around.

Secondly, if she had decided to do the same thing at a few different houses, it can be argued that the R and G (and maybe J) do not increase linearly with each house even though M does:

R + G + sum(Jn) = sum(Mn) + Q.

Therefore, if she was willing to steal from multiple houses even a smaller M would have sufficed. Though having one large M meant that the other Ms do not need to be big. Our $1800 lying around might have triggered a stealing spree.

Did she implicitly make these calculations? Even if she did not quantify them correctly, she would have estimated R and J. Did she forget about G?

What about Q? Were there any extenuating circumstances that made the decision easier? Was someone sick? Was she being harassed? Being always in search of a story, I feel there must be one here that is now most probably lost.