> Errr, to be clear, the reason that phones don’t get stolen is that there are anti-theft measures in place.

Activation lock actually helps to reduce phone theft, but IMEI blacklisting is basically totally worthless. It's way too easy to change a phone's IMEI for it to be useful, and you often don't even have to do that, since just taking the phone to a foreign country is often enough to evade the blacklist.