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There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately its economic. Crime used to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty good for the risk in
by deadbabe 1y ago
There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately its economic.
Crime used to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty good for the risk involved. Nowadays though, because of technology, risk has increased while the returns have also decreased. Barriers to entry for crimes worth committing are now way higher. Robbing a gas station decades ago could yield a nice chunk of cash that could probably pay bills for a month. But now with less people using cash and cost of living increasing, there’s no point. Most registers have pitiful amount of cash. And mugging strangers on the street is likely even worse. No one carries wads of cash anymore.
The hot industry to be in is ransomware. The sums are vast and the risk is low if you do it right. But it’s very white collar, it requires skills that your typical low level criminal won’t have.
Overall, it means there’s a lot of crimes that are done not for any financial reason, just for personal satisfaction.
- permo-w 1y agonot forgetting that CCTV is absolutely ubiquitous and high def, where previously it was reasonably rare and low quality
- deadbabe 1y agoAnd most young people would rather have social media that lets them easily be tracked than staying anonymous for the purposes of committing crimes.
- lupusreal 1y agoEven if you leave your phone at home to create an alibi for yourself, it is very likely that CCTVs will see you enroute to the crime scene, if not at the crime scene itself. Between businesses with cameras, front door cameras on houses, and traffic cameras, it's very difficult to travel anywhere without leaving a trace that investigators can pick up after the fact if they're sufficiently motivated.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI have a (likely lifelong) mostly-unrealised project to try and document all the things necessary to maximise the anonymity of committing a petty crime, with the vague notion of turning it into a meta-story about the joys of pointless intellectual pursuits that cost far more than they materially return.
- permo-w 1y agowi-fi/phone signal jammer would have to be included. most cctv operates wirelessly over wi-fi and no one is phoning the police with their phone signal jammed
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoI am doubtful widespread recordings are making much of a change. Unless you are Luigi Mangione, are police actually following video footage trying to tie up a crime? Even with a city wide alert, he almost escaped. It has been a common refrain that someone has an AirTag or other electronic surveillance they used to identify a thief, for which the police do nothing.
- qingcharles 1y agoThey actually do use the footage in a lot of cases. Bigger cities often have staff dedicated to just trying to extract raw footage from Temu-quality CCTV recording devices that most places own.
- permo-w 1y agothere's a major difference between an AirTag or tracking or some other form of relatively complex new-fangled technology that can be easily made to seem confusing or unreliable or even just inadmissible to a judge or jury, and high definition video evidence. if you're in a public place and there are a hundred video cameras, you're obviously going to be less inclined to do something illegal. this particularly being true for violent mob/gang activity
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoBy necessity criminals are having to move up the corporate ladder to have access to that which is worth appropriating.