What to do about "those few"

I have always held that rules for public places (like libraries) punish the honest users rather than deter the few folks the rules are meant to control.  In libraries, none is more basic than trying to hold patrons accountable for items they have checked out and never returned.  I am not talking about the person with $3 in overdue fines, but the few patrons at the other end of the spectrum.  At HPL we have an elaborate system of warnings, notices, and finally a collection agency to try and retrieve our materials from a relatively small number of folks who, for whatever reason, feel like they can check things out of the library and never return them.

Having been a public librarian for quite some time now, I have heard a tremendous variety of excuses from library users who just can't seem to get things back and checked in.  The excuses run the gamut from denying ever having "that book" in the first place to having returned items in the drop box, "so they are here somewhere", trying to make it the libraries fault.  These situations usually involve one or two items and rarely amount to any significant money.  But what really gets me are that small (but expensive) group who decide at some point to deliberately check out a large quantity of items, usually in a narrow subject range, with no intention of ever bringing them back.

What to do about this group then?  They don't respond to collection agency coercion.  They don't seem to acknowledge any sort of correspondence at all, polite, threatening, or otherwise.  Small claims court is an option in Kansas since library materials are included in a state statute covering property crime, I would assume specifically for this type of problem.

This seems like a reasonable solution since there appears to be no other effective method of trying to "get our stuff back".  Though, it brings with it a whole array of publicity issues that would have to be considered.  It doesn't look quite right when the library starts hauling people in to court over some missing books.  But the patrons I am thinking of have hundreds of dollars worth of our materials.  I suppose it comes down to what would be considered acting as a "good steward" of tax dollars.  After all, people who steal from the public library are really stealing from from all of us.