Welcome back to the Z Files. I am professor Z and I will be your host for this episode. This podcast is your one stop shop for all things crime related. I use my 8 years of research and 3 years as a criminology professor to cram each episode with facts about crime patterns, statistics, criminal behavior, and tips for improving your personal safety. Say goodbye to the fear you think you have about crime, and say hello to your new expertise in the field of criminology.
Today’s episode is called “There’s No Place Like Home .”
Fact count on this episode is around 50 if you’re wondering whether or not these 20 minutes are worth your time. I’ll be bringing in content from sociologists and victimologists. Victimology isnt well known but it’s basically criminologies favorite cousin. Victimology is the study of the victims of crime and the psychological effects on them from their experience. From using self-report data, victimologists have delivered fascinating statistics that helped map out offender motives and crime patterns. I am really excited to share findings in this field with you.
We will jump right into the property side of index crimes. As a recap from last time, violent crimes on the UCR make up 8.5% of reported criminal offending, thus property crime makes up the other 91.5%. First on our list is Larceny-Theft, which is merely the academic word for stealing something with an action isnt considered to be robbery, burglary, or motor-vehicle theft. The actual definition is The unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another. Larceny-theft includes a long list of categories from shoplifting to purse-snatching to stealing from construction sites to taking things from a motor vehicle. Now, important noteThis action is completed without threatening or injuring a person. If someone was injured or threatened during theft what would we call it? Robbery! That’s right.
Larceny-theft is usually the topic everyone dozes off in. It’s not a flashy crime, its not disturbingly intriguing. And yet, Larceny-theft is the #1 crime in America. In 2019,reported Larceny-theft occurred over 5 million times. That equates to over 1500 larceny-thefts per 100,000 people in the US. Items that were targeted in this crime were usually over $200 in value.
Statistically your odds of suffering larceny-theft are the highest out of all the other crimes. I don’t say this to strike fear in your heart. Because the next thing I will tell you is that the most popular type of larceny-theft is 100% avoidable. The main category of larceny-theft is taking things out of unlocked cars.. What happened in many of these situations is someone was walking along in a parking lot, figured they would try a few door handles, if any doors were opened they would look for some treasure. It happens in neighborhoods a lot too. People looking for the opportunity to steal something ARE ALWAYS going to try car doors. They are probably not as likely to break a car window because that will draw attention and they aren’t as likely to get away with it. With that said, dont leave valuable items out as bait in your car. But know that simply locking your car will prevent your things from being stolen the majority of the time. f you know cars are the number 1 and easiest target for people to steal from use that knowledge to your advantage. When I go home for the night I think to myself, if someone broke in my car tonight what would I be upset about them taking. If I can leave my car so that the answer is nothing and then lock my car doors, I’ve covered my bases.
The second property crime on our list is burglary. I have dedicated a lot of research time into this crime because some of my family members have experienced break ins and I wanted to understand what could be done for prevention. Lets gain some context and understand what our most recent crime data tells us about burglary trends in America. In 2019, the US had 1.1 million burglaries, this breaks down to about 340.5 burglaries per 100,000 people. In total, the victims of these burglaries suffered a $3 billion in losses. The average dollar amount lost per incident is $2,661. The majority of these burglaries happened by forcible entry, at a residence by day. Since the year 2000, burglaries are down 46%.That’s due to more affordable home security systems such as video monitored doorbells and easy to install camera systems. Research from sociologists and victimologists prove the connection between these types of home security systems and the decrease in burglary rates.
Sociologists were able to interview professional burglars to understand how they make the decision to break into a place. Most of the information I am going to share with you about these findings comes from a piece called “Decision Strategies of Residential Burglars,” I’ve linked it in the episode description if you would like to check it out! Anyways, These interviews revealed that a burglars greatest fear is to be seen. Their second greatest fear is to be seen and reported. When they are considering whether a house is a soft or hard target, meaning easy or hard to break in, they follow three main criteria. First, Occupancy. If their main fear is to be seen, obviously they do not want anyone to be in the house. They will look for cars in the drive way, noises or voices coming from the house, kids playing in the yard, whatever. Houses that are shut up with curtains drawn are more likely to send the message that no one is home. Sometimes they will probe the area by knocking on the door to ask for something just to see if anyone answers. It might also include going to other houses to figure out who’s vacationing in the neighborhood. If you have ever seen Home Alone, this would be the part when Harry is pretending to be a police officer going around to warn everyone about break ins and gather intel on holiday travel plans.**Sound Byte Home Alone** In a rare moment, hollywood portrayed something about crime mostly accurate. A new tool for predicting occupancy social media. Burglars can scour community and neighborhood pages to find individual profiles and look for evidence of posts that betray when someone is traveling. Those pictures that make your social media audience jealous of your travels could be announcement a burglar needs to know if you house is unoccupied. Even the celebrities fell prey to this in 2008 and 2009 when a group of 7 burglars known as the Bling Ring used public information about celebrities schedules to know when their house would be empty. They paid attention to things like tour dates or large ceremonies like the academy awards, and then hit the selected target when they knew the celebrity would be out. Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Megan Fox, and Lindsay Lohan were among a few of their victims.
The second criteria burglars look for is surveillability. Burlgars want to know to what extent will they be observed in the act. Things that make it easy for them to be observed and get caught include being in close proximity to a neighbors house, people being out on the street, the point of entry being highly visible, or a dog barking. Places that are attractive to burglars include those with natural cover or a privacy fence. Houses with privacy fences are considered ideal break-in locations. Why is this? Once a burglar gets behind a privacy fence, all actions are…private. They don’t have to look natural as they break your door down or pick a lock. They could take a sledge hammer to the back door and it wouldn’t matter with a privacy fence blocking the demolition. In terms of natural cover, it’s the same idea. Dense shrubbery or a heavily wooded area is nature’s gift to a burglar looking to conceal their act.
The third criteria is accessibility. This is mostly what it sounds like. How easy will it be to access and break into this structure. Are there burglar bars, electric or non climbable fences, special locks, or the ultimate, a dog. Burglars often choose the least protected sites. Most burglars will bypass a house with a dog. Dogs are a deterrent because they sabotage two of the criteria we went over. First, they remove the ability to be unseen because it is their instinct to be loud when someone is coming near their territory. It doesn’t matter if you have a police trained German Shepherd, or a chihuahua from the local pet store, dogs make noise when they perceive an intruder. It’s more about the attention a dog can attract rather than if they can attack someone. If dogs can make people in a neighborhood look to see where the sound is coming from, a burglar has already failed to stay under the radar. Second, every dog has the capability to bite someone. When a burglar is considering accessibility, they have to factor in whether or not they have the ability and time to navigate a break in with a dog at their heels, or their throat. Obviously larger dogs will be more of a threat in this situation, but don’t underestimate the power of a smaller dog. So next time your dog barks at what you think is nothing, maybe press pause on your frustration and consider that this instinct could be protecting your home from a break in.
If you don’t have a dog, you can do other things to make your home a hard target. Try not to advertise your electronics with your windows.. It can be really tempting to put a computer as close to the window as possible. I would suggest not doing this on your ground floor or near windows that are facing public access. This will decrease someones ability to window shop at your house. If you already have a privacy fence or live amidst natural cover that isn’t feasible to remove, make sure your entrances are covered by a bright motion detector spotlight or consider buying some sort of security device like a ring doorbell or a camera that can be mounted on that entrance. Today the market has a lot of very affordable options. This will not only serve as a deterrent to most burglars, but it will also alert you to any intruders so you can call the authorities for help. If you are leaving town, make sure you don’t leave large amounts of cash in your house. And Put your lights on different timers. If you only have one timer burglars will be able to figure it out. Things like cars in the driveway or outside the house will be helpful deterrents. As long as they are locked cars…
Victimologist have found a larger number of residential burglaries happen during the daylight hours, whereas more of the nonresidential burglaries happen during the night hours. We also find that more breakins happen in the spring and summer time. These aren’t random patterns. They emerge year after year. It’s logical if we stop and think about it. Before someone breaks into a house, they need to look for those three criteria which are once again occupancy,surveillability, and accessibility. Burglars will have to observe the place they want to break into to for sometime if they want to successfully meet their goal of not being seen or caught. This observation process is sometimes called casing a joint in the movies. Casing turns out to be more pleasant in warmer weather than when temperatures are miserably cold. So that explains the seasonal change in this crime. Now the time of day is explained the fact that most burglars don’t want people to be home when they target a place. Although they might resort to violence to steal something, most household burglars are not hoping for any kind of human interaction. This is different than someone who wants to rob a person at gunpoint. They have chosen that crime because they feel power and control over the person tey are robbing. Burglars have different motives.We have more household burglaries during the day time because that is usually when people will be at work. Workplaces are hit more at night because people are back home. I believe when data from 2020 is published, it will confirm these trends by revealing lower number of household break ins as much of the population was home quarantinging and a lot of jobs switched to a remote work from home model. I hope I explained all that well but if you have any questions please feel free to email me at thezfilespodcast@gmail.com. I will put the email address in the episode description as well.
Now we move onto motor-vehicle theft, our third property crime. **(GTA theme?) Along with homicide, this crime has the highest reporting rate. The high reporting rate is mostly due to insurance requirements. To qualify for a rental or new car from your insurance, a police report has to be filed about the stolen car. This crime also holds the award for the highest recovery rate of all stolen property. Out of 721,000 vehicles that were stolen in 2019, 56% were recovered. . Motor-vehicle theft is down by 47% since the year 2000. This is due to ignition immobilizers and other anti-theft devices. Some other trends about this crime are that trucks and large SUVs are popular targets. In 2012 the Ford F250 was the most sought out car to steal. The Escalade was also popular until manufacturers added an anti-theft device to it. I am aware of 5 motives for this crime. The first category is joyriders. This is a group that wants a car temporarily to have fun. Typically this category is made up of juvenile delinquents. The next category is the traveler. This is a person looking for a convenient car to get them from point A to point B. The third type the felon, or someone who needs a car in the spur of the moment to escape law enforcement. The next group include people known as parts choppers. Parts choppers want 3-5 year old common models that might have parts in high demand. Lastly, the shipper. A shipper looks for luxury cars to sell abroad. This one requires a great deal of resources such as having your own barge and also being able to manage the processes for exporting a car.
To conclude this section about crimes that involve stealing, I have a list of most commonly stolen items from greatest to least. Money is at the top of the list, followed by jewlery, clothing, furs, motor vehicles, office equipment, larger electronics, fire arms, and towards the end of the list, livestock.
We are nearly out of time but I can squeeze in our last property crime which is Arson. In 2019, 33,395 known arsons occurred. More than 42% of these involved structures. The average loss per each one of these incidents was $16,371, and 81 people were murdered using fire.
Arson is a scary one. The motives for committing arson include crime concealment, excitement, extremism, profit, vandalism, revenge, or heroism. Most of these motives show us that an arsonist is willing to disregard human life and respect for property in order to meet their own emotional needs. This is a crime that is rooted in childhood and doesn’t start randomly as an adult. Generally, children younger than age 7 who start fires do so accidently and innocently. By age 8, the intentions are not the same. Some kids between the ages of 8-12 can accidentally start a fire out of curiosity that gets out of hand. However, most kids of these ages who start some form of a destructive fire are usually suffering from a psycho-social conflict. I don’t mean these kids are psychos. That term is thrown around without knowing the definition or how to apply it properly. The conflict I am talking about here is one where they are old enough to understand that it is wrong to use fire to destroy things, but they can’t contain their urge to be in control of that destruction. Thus the social norms they have been taught come in conflict with their psychological urges. If you know someone in this age group who enjoys using fire outside of a campfire or fireplace, I suggest directing that child to professional help. It’s this age group that is key to detecting someone on the path to becoming a career arsonist. Once arson is committed by someone ages 13-18, they already have a history of undetected fire starting.
We also find that people who have committed serial murder have either dabbled in arson or are very attracted to this action for its damage potential. Someone who wants to commit arson is looking for the strongest tool available to cause harm. It’s an addiction to power that can’t be stopped by conscience. And on that dark note, we are at the end of our time together!
If you like the content, please subscribe and leave a review when the platform allows! Tune in next time to hear all about homicide on the episode “A time to kill”
