On December 16, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a $9 million settlement with Hyundai and Kia for failing to install proper anti-theft technology in their vehicles. The press release called it a "reckless decision" that led to thefts, injuries, and deaths. The framing is familiar: corporation cuts corners, people get hurt, state extracts penalty, justice is served.

Except the same cars existed in South Korea for years without triggering a theft epidemic. The design was identical. The outcome was not. The variable wasn't engineering. It was behavior.

The "Kia Boys" trend started in Milwaukee around 2021, when videos showing how to hotwire certain Hyundai and Kia models with a USB cable went viral on TikTok. The theft spike was immediate and staggering. In New York City, Kia and Hyundai thefts doubled from 2021 to 2022. In the first four months of 2023, the city saw 977 car thefts of these models, up from 148 in the same period the year prior, a 560% increase. In Syracuse, more than half of all stolen cars in the first seven months of 2023 were Kias or Hyundais. Nationally, theft claims for these vehicles increased 1,000% between 2020 and 2023.

The human cost was real. In July 2023, a 16-year-old driving a stolen Hyundai in Washington Heights collided with another vehicle, killing a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old. In Syracuse, stolen Kias and Hyundais were linked to the fatal shooting of two teenagers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration attributes eight deaths to the trend overall.

So the state sued the car companies. And here's where the story gets uncomfortable.

The $9 million settlement breaks down like this: $4.5 million goes to consumers whose cars were stolen or damaged, which is legitimate restitution. The other $4.5 million goes to the states as "penalties." New York's share is approximately $220,000. There is no mention in the settlement of youth programs, community intervention, restorative justice, or anything that might address why teenagers were stealing cars for TikTok clout in the first place. The money moves from a corporation to state general funds. That's it.

This is theater, not governance.

The uncomfortable truth is that the state chose to extract money from Hyundai because it was easier than addressing the actual problem. Auto theft has the lowest clearance rate of any crime category in America, just 8.2% nationally in 2023, according to Statista. In Milwaukee, where the trend originated, only 6% of car thefts are solved, and only 5% result in prosecution. The enforcement vacuum is nearly total.

But pointing this out creates its own discomfort, because the obvious response (more prosecution, harsher sentences) runs into a different failure. The juvenile justice system is broken, and it disproportionately harms Black kids. Mass incarceration has been tried. It doesn't work. It cycles young people through a system that makes them worse, not better, and it does nothing to address the conditions that made stealing cars for internet clout seem like a reasonable idea in the first place.

So we're left with two failures, and the state chose the one that generates a press release.

Corporate liability lawsuits are politically palatable. They have a clear villain, a clear victim, and a clear resolution. The AG gets to announce a settlement. The headlines write themselves. No one has to answer the harder questions: Why are teenagers in these communities stealing cars? What would actually help? Where should $9 million go if the goal is fewer thefts and fewer deaths, rather than just fewer headlines?

The victims of this trend are not in wealthy suburbs. The crashes, the thefts, the deaths are happening in the same neighborhoods where the kids doing the stealing live. Victims and perpetrators often share zip codes. The enforcement vacuum doesn't hurt Westchester. It hurts the South Bronx, Milwaukee's North Side, Syracuse's inner city. The people most harmed by the state's failure to address this are the same people the state claims to be protecting.

Nine million dollars could fund a lot of youth employment programs. It could support community intervention before kids get into the system. It could create mentorship pipelines, job training, something that addresses the "why" instead of just the "what." Instead, it's a settlement that lets everyone move on without changing anything structural.

The software fix, by the way, worked. Hyundai and Kia offered a patch starting in February 2023, and by mid-2024, theft rates for patched vehicles had dropped 52-64%, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute. The "design flaw" was fixable. The behavioral problem persists for unpatched cars, and no settlement changes that.

The question isn't whether Hyundai should have included immobilizers. They should have. The question is whether suing them addresses the problem or just provides cover for not addressing it. A missing immobilizer is not permission to steal. But "they should have built better locks" is easier than "why are kids doing this," and the easier question is the one that fits in a press release.

When institutions can't or won't address root causes, they regulate objects instead. Can't solve youth disengagement? Sue the car company. Can't fix the enforcement vacuum? Announce a settlement. The state does what it can do (extract money from solvent targets) rather than what would help. Litigation substitutes for governance. And everyone moves on until the next trend, the next spike, the next round of deaths in neighborhoods that never see the settlement money.

That's not policy. It's theater. And the audience is everyone except the people who actually need help.