Such crimes have been largely on the decline since the 1970s. Some writers have theorized that changes in American lifestyle and culture have played a significant role in this trend. Many of us spend our evenings at home; indeed, many of us work from our homes. Does this foil the plans of the typical burglar? More homes have two car garages; 64% to be exact, up from 48% of homes in 1973, according to the National Home Builders Association. Cars are now kept inside as opposed to parked on the street where they may be stolen or vandalized. Not just automobiles either, of course: lawn tools, bicycles, and other home necessities are now tucked away from a thief's appraising eye. We now lock our doors and windows. Some of us have bars on our windows. Some of us set our burglar alarms; the average system is now fairly affordable, having fallen about 34% in the 1990s. An estimated 20,000 gated communities exist in the nation, housing more than 8 million people. According to one study, 97% of them have electronic keypads (a far smaller percentage have guards for the property).
There will always be thieves, of course. The number of them is influenced to no small degree by the state of the economy. When times are tough, there is going to be some segment of the population that will just take what they can't afford.
The first panels in the chapter will provide an introduction to property offenses: the rate of those victimized and those arrested for such deeds. Other panels will look at each segment of property crime: larcenies, burglaries, and car theft. What are the major trends around these crimes? The level of some crimes has remained curiously consistent; purse snatching, for example, has made up 1% of all larcenies during the last 30 years. Other crimes have changed in subtle ways. In the late 1990s, law enforcement saw an increase in burglaries committed during the day. As parked cars became more difficult to steal, the crime of carjackings began to increase.
This chapter will also look at arson. It was first indexed as a property crime in October 1978. This crime doesn't have the same basic motivations that property crime does. The panel includes details on who commits this crime and why.
The final panels in this chapter will look at a different kind of theft — fraud. Hopefully the reader will see the slightly twisted logic in grouping property crime and fraud together: if I can't steal it, one might argue, then I'll cheat you out of it. The first panel will look at common types of fraud. Later panels will examine some of these crimes in closer detail. Identity theft is a fast-growing crime; a few vital pieces of information and a crook can cause you a great deal of grief. A case of corporate wrongdoing seems to make headlines regularly in recent years, from the fall of Enron to insider trading accusations against Martha Stewart. How many businesses cook their books to meet their bottom lines? We'll see how Corporate America handles their finances.
The fraud section also includes several panels on copyright infringement — another issue important to big businesses. Should original ideas be protected? What about great works of art and music? Do they belong to the public to use as it sees fit? We'll also see how the old crime of counterfeiting has changed in the computer age. Another panel will address health care fraud, and examine just who the real offenders are. The last panel in the chapter takes a light-hearted look at one of the oldest cons in the book to show that people do indeed "still fall for that stuff."
User Comments Add a comment…