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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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