AZ Central reports that the usual logic—the worse the economy the higher the crime rate—doesn’t apply to this current, uh, economic downturn. Especially when it comes to grand theft auto. “Automotive theft stands out as having decreased most sharply,” the e-paper reports. “Thefts are fallen by about a fifth. So far this year, 243 autos have been stolen in Peoria, down from 305 in the first half of 2008.” Obviously, there are LOTS of variables in this sort of thing: population trends, policing, etc. But at least one insurance biz guy reckons car thieves are losing the battle between genetics and anti-theft technology.
Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the National Crime Insurance Bureau, said the decrease in auto thefts is consistent with national trends and signifies that the market for stolen cars is changing.
As newer cars become harder to steal, “fewer garden-variety knuckleheads” are going to be able to take them, Scafidi said.
Or a simpler explanation is that we’ve locked up so many career criminals for MINOR drug offenses (mandatory minimum sentences for Marijuana?) that there are few people left outside of prison to steal the new cars.
Of course society pays higher costs to feed, clothe, and crack the incarcerated little skulls of the non-violent offenders (often in expensive privatized prisons), but that’s just the yang to this equation.
Sorry, I’ve been re-reading ‘Reefer Madness’ by Eric Schlosser.
Bullets are always cheaper than jails.
Part of this is probably due to far greater enforcement on the part of the police.
Maybe the thieves don’t like the new cars either.
Maybe it has more to do with the price of second hand cars. If they fluctuate so much and are cheap enough nobody in their right mind is buying/selling a stolen one
The parts market drives a lot of professional auto theft as well as export. For joy rides or other sues of a complete car you have to look at how cars are a bit harder to steal than the GM and Chrysler cars were. GM cars were by far the easiest to break the column lock and start. Most of those cars are gone now.