Warnings to Combat Burglaries Carry New Urgency During Recession

They're holiday rituals of the Grinchy sort, annual warnings from local police telling us how to protect ourselves from burglary and theft during the dark, wintry days of the holiday season. Basically, their advice is don't flash what you've got, and do lock up everything you can. It's simple enough and always worth keeping in mind.

But some learned folks are going a step beyond the usual nag, warning us that with so many homes and jobs being lost in this brutal economy, burglary and theft rates will probably increase.

Well, isn't that just the last thing any of us needs now?

Richard Rosenfeld, professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, has studied the matter and sees a link. "Burglaries do tend to increase during times of economic decline and tend to fall during times of economic expansion, and it has been so for decades," he said.

But it's not a simple link to unemployment, he said. Rather, consumer sentiment -- people's perception of how they and the overall economy are faring -- is the best indicator of whether someone is more likely to steal your stuff. The bad news is that consumer sentiment fell in November to the lowest level since 1980, according to a survey by Reuters and the University of Michigan.

Hard times won't work some voodoo that turns your upstanding -- but unemployed -- neighbor into a burglar. In fact, with more unemployed people now spending their days at home, their presence could dampen any trends toward burglary. Most break-ins happen during the work day, while few people are home to notice. FBI statistics show there are 1.75 times more home burglaries during the day than at night. Nearly 68 percent of all burglaries in 2007 were at residences, and typical theft added up to $1,991, according to the FBI.

Instead, a bad economy works its black magic on those who were inclined to steal anyway. And they find a much more lucrative market waiting for them.

"During economic downturns, markets for stolen goods tend to expand," he said. People are more willing to buy things they suspect may have been stolen.

Thus, the people who would ordinarily find themselves tempted to grab a GPS gadget out of the car parked in your driveway, or to break into your house when it's obvious no one is home, find an even greater incentive to commit such crime when the economy tanks.

If you're the one getting robbed, though, it doesn't much matter what motivates the criminal.

I looked at crime statistics reported by local police departments to see if there has been an uptick so far in this recession. Some jurisdictions haven't reported any crime rates for 2008 yet (although you would think by December they might cough up some data from early in the year). From the numbers available so far, it looks like you had better double-check your locks.

In Prince George's County, which is suffering one of the area's highest foreclosure rates, residential burglaries through July were up 17 percent over the same period in 2007. That followed a 7.7 percent annual increase in 2007.