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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Home burglary is almost dead. What's to steal? Any TV you can carry is almost worthless. There's no market in used desktop computers, or used furniture. Nobody has cameras any more. Few people keep much cash around. Phones are probably in the owner's pocket, not left in their house. And because the economy is down at the low end, pawn shops and flea markets are choked with stuff they can't sell.

There have been single white collar crimes that exceed the value of all US burglaries. Madoff alone stole more than five years of burglaries.

The FBI has their priorities wrong. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports tally a burglary when it is reported, but a while collar crime only when an arrest is made. This creates the illusion that white collar crime is much smaller than it is.

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  Home burglary is almost dead.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/hb9411pr.cfm

"The median dollar value of items and cash stolen during completed household burglaries increased 54 percent from 1994 to 2011, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The median financial loss during completed burglaries in 1994 was $389 (adjusted for inflation), compared to $600 in 2011. The average dollar loss in 2011 among households that lost $1 or more was about $2,120."

The rate dropped significantly. From your link:

From 1994 to 2011, the rate of all burglaries (attempted and completed) decreased 56 percent, from a peak of 63.4 to 27.6 victimizations per 1,000 U.S. households. The number of burglaries experienced by U.S. households declined 47 percent, from about 6.4 million burglaries in 1994 to about 3.4 million in 2011

I'm not surprised that median went up, I would expect that as a side effect of a significant drop in the rate.

The number of occurrences dropped significantly, while the dollar amount (in real dollars) went up substantially. Burglars tend to work in teams nowadays.

The report breaks things out better:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hb9411.pdf

Table 5 sort of shows what I was getting at, burglaries of lower income households dropped a lot more than burglaries in general. One explanation of that is that lower end break ins aren't worth it anymore.

If that is the case, the average would go up without the rest of the burglaries really changing.

(I guess that could be described as a change in the distribution of burglaries rather than a shift in the distribution; I read your reply here as pointing to a shift)

This is anecdotal, of course, but there are frequent TV news stories here in the SF Bay Area showing surveillance video of burglaries and home invasions; three a the typical crew size.

One thing we don't know is how many small-take thefts just go unreported now, as break-ins (of autos, especially) have become epidemic. My city doesn't even send a response for property crimes now. The victim just files a report on their website for insurance purposes. A friend in Berkeley had two petty burglaries in the past year-plus and didn't report for that reason.

And also it seems to me it'd be easier to walk in and steal tablets, phones, and laptops which are actually worth something really quickly compared to casing the whole house for jewelery which may or may not be locked up, can be very unique, and probably way harder to fence.

So you've got expensive non-unique items that others want in easier to find locations, a definite win for the burglar I'd think.

I'd look at this the ither way around. All the electronics have serial numbers and need to be taken out if state or out of country to have any value. Gold jewelry is easily melted down and completely untraceable.

Last time our place was burgled, they ignored laptops and cameras and went for the jewelry.

Very strange. I'd assume they'd fence it to known associates.

If somebody steals my phone, I can report it stolen and none of the major carriers in the US will allow its IMEI to register on their networks. This effectively renders it useless to anyone who buys it.

There was an organized crew here that would snatch phones from people's hands and run off the subway as the doors closed. They just changed the IMEI and resold them and got away with this for almost 2yrs before getting caught

Until the phone is sent to a foreign country. We have had IMEI registration here in Australia for years and phones still get stolen.

how much home alarm tech and cams and surveillance etc was there in 1994? Not nearly as much.

The general spending of all people on electronics is much higher now than in 1994.

So the rate is lower, the security is higher, the value of available goods to steal in any given home are higher.

It doesnt matter if they cant hock them at pawn shops. I have ~20 computers in my home.... many monitors etc...

So yeah the rate is down, but the value and density of targets has increased -- but it metered by also much more vigilant and camera ready people

We were burgled last week, and they stole thousands of dollars worth of jewellery, a laptop and two ipads...

...and the spare key for my car, which they used to steal the car.

Sorry for your loss, but thanks for the reminder that I shouldn't be keeping my spare key in a visible place when I leave home.

I'm thinking that a small safe is probably the best bet, which can also be used to store documents like passports.

Make sure it's bolted down too. As a rule, expect it to be about as difficult to remove as it was to install.

We have a small safe that we use to store sex toys so our kids won't find them. Hopefully if we ever get burgled they'll make off with our sex toys rather than tearing the house apart looking for other valuables (in vain, because we own none)

A safe attracts attention. It screams - there's something valuable inside. They would probably just take it with them and break at some other point. I keep the spare keys and documents in a place they would have to take the house apart to find.

Man, car theft is a really dick thing to do. It's like your simultaneously maximizing inconvenience to the former owner and the odds that you're going to get caught. Wouldn't it make sense to put your effort into items that are easier to transport, conceal, and fence?

Chances of being caught are actually not as high as you'd think - stolen cars are often not sold as a whole, but rather fenced to shady mechanics who will strip it down and sell the parts individually, without association with the original license plate or VIN.

I was flying in an LAPD helicopter the other day, and they spotted a half chopped car in an alley between two buildings downtown. Said they find them pretty frequently and it's hard to track back to the original thieves.

they don't have to be a mechanic. anyone with a cheap set of tools and an ebay account can be selling 'used' parts all day long.

Similar deal with my parents - their house was burgled while they were sleeping - they got MacBooks, iPads, an iPhone, wallets, and then the car keys so they got the car. Luckily jewellery was in their bedroom where the burglars didn't go.

A friend of mine had both his cars stolen a couple years ago (keys were out on a table, I think).

There are ~20 break-ins and car prowls a year in our town, a small one near Seattle. They've caught a few of the bad guys doing this (it is a chancy and protracted process).

Mostly they seem to be looking for laptops, cash, jewelry and similar small things easily sold (guessing, for drug money). We also have a lot of mail getting stolen, so identity theft is a thing, too.

We're not under siege, but burglary is not dead, either.

Doesn't sound like a typical household, therefore unlikely to be a common occurrence.

That's not true. Especially in areas where there's lots of impoverished areas near areas with stuff to steal. Property theft is a skill easily picked up with Craigslist and eBay making fencing easier than ever. Unless you have a better way for crooked, broke people with few professional skills to make $1000-5000 in under a half hours' risk. ;)

Also, with the proliferation of internet-connected devices, a lot of electronics can't be resold if stolen. If an iPhone is stolen you can remotely lock it and it won't be usable as long as it's still in the country, and many TVs will send phone-homes that can be used to trace stolen property.

Not sure whether this adds up in case of burglary, but you can sell iPhones and iPads for spare parts. I think the hardware of a new iPhone would be worth something north of $100 in Shenzhen. Probably even more in the western repair shop, where they compete only with producer's parts that have huge markup.

Source: I just got half of my S4 replaced with brand new parts for 1/4 the price of the parts themselves because I gave them my broken screen (with working electronics).

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports tally a burglary when it is reported, but a while collar crime only when an arrest is made.

There's some justification for this: It's very common to say "a burglary has clearly occurred but we don't know who is responsible", but with white-collar crime it's almost impossible to know whether an act was illegal until you've identified who did it.

These guys forced their way into a house to rob a 7yr old at gunpoint for spare change you'd be surprised the idiocy of criminals http://blogs.vancouversun.com/tag/rouslan-erchov/

Lot's of burglary stats are manipulated too in order for police to not draw heat from the public http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE82818620120309

Home burglary is far from dead. I can look out my front window and see two houses burglarized in the last five years or so, and the neighborhood listserve regularly mentions attempts. The rate may have diminished over the last few decades, since the days when Denver precincts used to keep the burglaries in one ledger, everything else in another.

It's hard to miss a burglary, but a white collar crime, cleverly done, can escape notice indefinitely.

Let's not forget extortion-like tactics employed by many trial lawyers - "here's a meritless claim, and it will be cheaper/easier to just pay the ransom to make me go away (only I will be very careful never to use that word)". I agree with Animats. While police seizures are worrisome, we have to put the risk into perspective.

Good points! It's hard to account for white collar crime. To some degree the entire financial system is rife with borderline criminal activity.

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