It has been reported that bank crimes sharply fell last year, by almost 11% compared to 2008. It’s especially food for thought for those who believe that joblessness and poor economy instigates more crime.
The FBI released the bank crime numbers recently which indicated that the total number of crimes have fallen to 6,065 from the previous year’s 6,857 violations reported in 2008. There are some more interesting facts that came to light with respect to these bank crimes.
Friday was reported to be the most common weekday when the crimes happened, and morning hours were seemingly the preferred time of the day for committing such violations. The South saw the maximum number of crimes with 2,048 violations reported.
Experts say that a possible reason for the decline of the bank crimes is the increased vigilance and use of advanced bank security technology, which is acting as a deterrent for the criminals to undertake these high risk crimes. The returns are diminishing for criminals with the increasing difficulty of carrying out such crimes.
Recession and crime
But the more interesting deduction is that there is no direct correlation between recession and financial crimes like robberies and burglaries. It is not the dearth of money that causes people to take up crime, but the lure of easy and fast money that potentially does. Now, since the money is becoming difficult to loot as the security measures increase in banks, the criminals are possibly realizing that crimes will not meet their malicious ends easily.
All types of major bank crimes went down significantly – robberies were down by 13%; burglaries by 17%; extortion by a significant 62% and larcenies fell by 32%. The numbers are a positive sign and in line with the overall crime rate in the country, which has also dropped over the last one year.
Another thing evident from the statistics reported on bank crimes was that the criminals involved were averse to violence in most cases, and only when instigated or at risk did they indulge in violent acts. Only 4% of the reported crimes had incidences of violence. The two major modus operandi of criminals to steal money was by an ‘oral demand’ or a ‘demand note’.
The total sum looted in these crimes last year was 46 million dollars of which only 8 million dollars was recovered. In 91% of the cases, the loot was taken in, which was the same as in 2008.