Long sentences are far less effective than reliable enforcement. Something that seems to be very true in practice. If you steal or vandalise something in China, there is an extremely high chance you will get caught, you won't get a massive penalty, but it will be enough to cover the damages + some.

If you for example knew that stealing had a penalty of 100% of the item value + 10% fine, with a 100% chance of getting caught, you'd never steal anything again even though the penalty is so much smaller than what it is currently in most countries. And then if you make a dumb decision as a teenager or in a lapse of judgement, it won't ruin your life.

Is that true? USA seems to have long sentences and a high incarceration rate, yet still has high crime when compared to other countries with less incarceration.

Yes, many cases of people calling the police with actual tracker data showing exactly where their stolen property is, and the response being to get laughed at and told it's not a priority.

That entirely varies by locality. My parents just had their vehicle broken into and their credit and debit cards stolen (in addition to some cash) and the local police department visited the grocery store where the thief used the cards to buy gift cards multiple times to collect security footage to try and track them down (the grocery store store’s security lead was out the first time on vacation). If your local police department won’t do this and you want them to, ask your community to raise taxes to hire more and/or better cops.

It's true. We're getting the worst possible outcome. Police state surveillance that tolerates nearly every level of criminality. Anarcho-tyranny.

This depends on what evidence there is. If it's just "omg, bike was here yesterday, but is not here today, find it!" then what are they really going to do? They are not calling a CSI team and collect fibers from the scene, this is not a TV show.

In my experience, the police will follow the leads if they have them. I had several bikes stolen by homeless so they hid them in some commercial property few blocks away. One bike had a tracker, which they found and disabled but they did it near where they ultimately hid the bikes. Using the last location from the tracker cops were able to find the bikes and return them. If there were cameras they might be able to also find the perps and put them to jail.

The 4th amendment doesn’t really have much of anything to say about public surveillance; the courts have largely agreed it does not constitute a search unless it reveals information that is not intended to be public (such as the thermal imaging of buildings) or reveals intimate personal information (such as documentation of habits through long term data aggregation).