BOSTON — A career Boston burglar with a rap sheet as long as your arm kicked in the doors of four tony Beacon Hill boutiques in just 18 minutes — barely a week after strolling out of jail, cops say. And a judge slapped him with a measly $1,000 bail.

Boston Municipal Court Judge Paul Treseler signed off on the $1,000 figure on May 28 after Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden’s office had asked the court to hold the defendant on the new charges. Treseler said no to detention — and yes to bargain-basement bail — for a man with a 24-page rap sheet going back to 1998, on active probation through February 2027, and just six months removed from a conviction for hitting the same Beacon Hill block.

The only thing keeping James Schaff off Charles Street this weekend is a separate no-bail probation hold Treseler signed at the same hearing — not the bail on the actual burglary spree. Take away the probation, and Schaff would be back on Charles Street tonight.

Schaff, 59, walked out of the Suffolk House of Correction on May 11 after a six-month stint for the 2023 break-ins. Nine days later he was right back at it.

Cops nabbed him three days later in Dewey Square.

Here is what the Massachusetts bail framework produces. A 24-page rap sheet. Active probation through 2027. Six months in the can for hitting the same block in 2023. Out nine days. Four more boutique doors kicked in. Surveillance video of the suspect punching through a jewelry store window for $152 in the register. The price tag Suffolk County’s system put on that profile, on the new charges, was $1,000.

The Baker era did not fix it. The Healey era hasn’t either. Judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and the Department of Correction have all settled into the same working assumption — men like Schaff are part of the urban landscape, held when at all because an unrelated probation matter happens to be sitting on the docket.

Fed-up shop owners aren’t buying the catch-and-release routine.

Avigail Adam, the jeweler left with a shattered door and an empty till, told reporters: “It’s very violating, it’s not a good feeling.”

Tserang Sangpo, who runs nearby Tibet Emporium and got hit by Schaff in 2024, didn’t mince words. “He should be locked up forever,” she told reporters.

The Suffolk system priced him at $1,000.

The June 25 probation violation hearing is the next test. If the court revokes Schaff’s probation and remands him on the prior case, Beacon Hill gets a reprieve. If it doesn’t, the $1,000 bail Treseler set on the new charges becomes operative — and Schaff walks out the door.

And if the next career burglar who hits Charles Street is not conveniently on probation already, the $1,000 figure is what Beacon Hill’s merchants will be left with from the jump.

Because the framework is not built for them.