Old age no obstacle when robbing a bank
BRITISH tabloids were abuzz after a dramatic Easter weekend heist in London’s Hatton Garden diamond district, as thieves made off with more than £10m in cash and gems from a heavily secured vault.
According to one theory, the gang used a contortionist who slithered into the vault. Others held that a thirtysomething criminal genius known as the “King of Diamonds” had masterminded the caper.
But when police arrested nine suspects, the most striking thing about the crew wasn’t physical dexterity or villainous brilliance. It was age. The youngest suspect is 42, and most are a lot older, including two men in their mid-seventies.
At a preliminary hearing last month, a 74-year-old suspect said he couldn’t understand a clerk’s questions because he was hard of hearing. A second suspect, 59, walked with a pronounced limp.
Young men still commit a disproportionate share of crimes in most countries. But crime rates among the elderly are rising in Britain and other European and Asian nations, adding a worrisome new dimension to the problem of ageing populations.
South Korea reported recently that crimes committed by people 65 and over rose 12.2% from 2011 to 2013 — including an eye-popping 40% increase in violent crime — outstripping a 9.6% rise in the country’s elderly population during the period. In Japan, crime by people older than 65 more than doubled from 2003 to 2013, with elderly people accounting for more shoplifting than teenagers.
In the Netherlands, a 2010 study found a sharp rise in arrests and incarceration of elderly people. And in London, police say arrests of people 65 and over rose 10% from March 2009 to March last year, even as arrests of under-65s fell 24%. The number of elderly British prison inmates has been rising at a rate more than three times that of the overall prison population for most of the past decade.
people in developed countries tend to be “more assertive, less submissive and more focused on individual social and economic needs” than earlier generations were, says Bas van Alphen, a psychology professor at the Free University of Brussels who has studied criminal behaviour among the elderly.
“When they see in their peer group that someone has much more money than they do, they are eager to get that,” he says.
Older people may also commit crimes because they feel isolated. “I had one patient who stole candies to handle the hours of loneliness every day,” says Van Alphen, who describes such behaviour as “novelty-seeking”.
Rising poverty rates among the elderly are being blamed in some countries. That’s the case in South Korea, where 45% of people over 65 live below the poverty line.
“The government should make an all-out effort to expand the social safety net and provide jobs and dwellings for the elderly,” the Korea Times reported last month, warning that by 2026 more than 20% of the country’s population will be older than 65.
The “Opa Bande” (Grandpa Gang), three German men in their sixties and seventies who were thief a nickname based on distinctive characteristics seen on camera.
Two of them, dubbed Tall Man and Old Man, “struggle to move a bin before they drag it outside”, the Mirror newspaper reported in its analysis of the security footage presented in court.
“The Old Man leans on the bin, struggling for breath.”