What happens when you don’t hang thieves?

In A Dark Room, when the villagers catch a thief, the player is given the option to hang them or spare them. I always hang them, because the theft is so crippling and can go on for so long.

Has anybody ever tried sparing them? What happens? Does the thieving stop anyway?

Solution 1:

After digging through the code, I found the scene in global.js. In both cases, whether you hang the thief or spare him, the stealing stops. What differs is what you get in addition to that: If you spare the thief, you get a perk 'stealthy', which lowers the chance you encounter a fight in the wilds. If you hang him, you get everything the thieves stole back.