> EXPLAINER: WHY THEFT DOESN’T PAY
Our ideas about thieves are often tinted by Hollywood depictions, like the calculating heists of Ocean’s Eleven or The Pink
Panther. The truth is a lot less glamorous. According to a new long-term study on theft, the typical story is one of bumbling teens, most of whom quickly grow out of their bad habits.
Most thieves are active only for a short period of time, and make very little money at it, economist Geoffrey Fain Williams has found.
In fact, theft looks not so much like a way of getting free stuff or money as a stage some people experience in adolescence — and most grow out of.
Williams looked at data on self-reported thefts from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth from Ohio State University, which followed more than 8,000 people between 1997 and 2011.
In addition to lots of other things, the survey asks people if they had stolen anything in the past year, and how much it cost. Williams classifies those who report stealing at least one item worth more than $50 in the last year as “thieves,” and those who stole something worse less than $50 as “petty thieves.”
He finds that theft isn’t that uncommon. Sixteen per cent of the people overall — one in five men and one in 10 women — report having stolen something worth more than $50 in the last year. Including the petty thieves, the numbers rise to one in three men and one in four women.
These statistics are self-reported, so they likely miss out on some people who simply don’t report their theft.
The thieves include a disproportionate number of men, minorities and people with less education as well as people who smoke, drink, have mental-health challenges and lower standardized test scores.
What is striking in the research is that Williams finds that thieves are active for only very short periods of time — on average, less than one year. Over the 15 years of data, fewer than 5 per cent of thieves continue their behavior for more than three years.
The data suggests that a “thief” is less a type of person than a stage some people go through at one point in their lives — specifically, adolescence. “For the majority of offenders, property crime may simply be an exploratory phase,” Williams writes. Theft drops off very sharply as people leave their teen years.
The second major thing Williams finds is that this type of crime literally doesn’t pay. The median earnings from one single act of theft are only $37.50 and a surprising amount of thieves make nothing or next to nothing per theft.