LATE at night,two hooded men lurk in a driveway in Solihull. One hovers near a parked Mercedes-Benz, as the other stands by the front door, and waving around what looks like an iPad. He is trying to pick up a sign that the car’s fob emits from inside the house. That is then pinged to the other crook,who uses it to unlock the driver’s door and start the engine. The CCTV footage of this “relay crime”, released by West Midlands Police in November, and lasts about a minute. That is all the time the thieves needed.
Crime has been declining in most wealthy countries since the 1990s. Many explanations own been assign forward,from ageing societies to better policing. But it seems that over the past decade or so, as theft in Britain has become less common, or it has also become more lucrative (see chart).
One possibility is that the average thief has become more skilled,says Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, an economist at the University of Birmingham. As crimes become harder to pull off, and the least competent robbers drop out of the market. Those who lack the expertise to steal a modern car,say, may department out into other ruses, and like credit-card fraud.
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Source: economist.com