Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
My understanding is that the anti-theft powder/dye banks use is a kind of bomb in its own right that can take fingers off. The wiki article describes it as a "radio-controlled incendiary device" which sounds much more likely to go wrong than a glitter bomb would.

I think some people are right up-thread; if a thief was injured by this homemade booby trap they could probably sue the homeowner and collect damages. Such is the perversity of modern law that a robbery victim is more likely to get in trouble for defending themselves from such a thief than the thief would for the original offense.
Like Zim said, that's not perversity, that's fairness. The thief didn't have the right to take the package, and the homeowner didn't have the right to glitter-bomb the thief's car (or injure the thief). Booby-traps will almost always get the booby-trapper in trouble if the police/courts get involved.

You could go the legal booby-trap route, which would be to order something with a high enough value that it'd be a more serious crime, or get a high-level job with the feds and get something with classified information on it stolen (one of my friends actually had this happen; some kids stole a laptop out of his car, and didn't realize they took the wrong damn laptop), or stuff like that.

Of course, "legal booby-trap" in this sense is "don't do vigilante stuff and let the police take care of it."