There was an interesting article over at the Wall Street
Journal that looked at the decline of bank robbery here in the United States.
Bank holdups have been nearly cut in half over the past decade—to 5.1 robberies per 100 U.S. banks in 2011. Though the nationwide crime rate is dropping, the decline in bank robberies far exceeds the decline in other crimes, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. Preliminary 2012 figures released last week show the lowest tally in decades: 3,870 bank robberies, down from more than 5,000 a year earlier.
Bank-security experts and former FBI agents attribute the decline to stepped-up security and tougher sentencing for bank robbers. Many also say that more recently, sophisticated criminals are recognizing bank robbery as a high-risk, low-reward crime and are migrating online.
Via The Wall Street Journal
Crime analysts use the term displacement to refer to the
idea that crime will sometimes move when enforcement activity is directed
towards these crimes. Most often, this term applies to spatial displacement. If
crime occurs in one area and enforcement efforts are stepped up, crime will
sometimes move to another area. In a way
you could argue that criminals turning from bank robbery to other types of
financial crimes is a type of displacement. Regardless of what you want to call
this trend, a reduction in bank robbery is a good thing.
Armed robberies are inherently dangerous to the public, to
law enforcement and to the crook. The important lesson here is that some of the
credit for this trend lies in relatively low cost measures such as better bank
security and improved cash handling procedures. A 70% decrease in robberies due
to the use of “bandit barriers” by Southern California banks is nothing to
sneeze at.
If Willie Sutton was around today, he might have to brush up
on his computer skills.
