Better Alarms and Less Cash at Home Bring Hard Times for Burglars
In the internet age, there are easier ways for crooks to make money.
Crime of all kinds has declined a lot in the U.S. over the past quarter century, but no other crime has seen quite the collapse that burglary has. The rate is now about one-fifth what it was in 1980 and is still falling. Why have burglars fallen on hard times?
It’s probably not policing, because only 13.9% of burglaries resulted in an arrest in 2018, a percentage that’s barely budged in decades. And until recently, it wasn’t home security systems either. When criminologist Scott Decker was interviewing burglars for the 1994 book Burglars on the Job: Streetlife and Residential Break-ins, they told him that they targeted houses with alarm-company signs on them because those were more likely to have valuables inside, plus the alarms were seldom turned on. Decker, now an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, believes the new generation of internet-enabled, cellphone-directed alarm systems and doorbell cameras are much more effective. “This is an area where technology really has played a role in consistently knocking down burglary rates,” he says.