Forget ADT security systems. If you want to prevent burglaries, just stay home.
Or so recent reports on the decrease in home burglaries would seem to indicate. These reports show a strong connection between the falling number of break-ins and the fact that so many people are now unemployed and spending more time in their homes.
Police departments have recorded a 35 percent decline in burglaries during the first six months of 2009 in some cities. And, the trend is evident in smaller communities as well as bit cities.
In Boston, there were 2199 burglaries reported in the first nine months of this year. That is 335 fewer than in the same period last year. In Minneapolis, the number of break-ins that were reported dropped more than 15 percent compared with the same time last year and more than 25 percent compared with 2007.
Other crimes including robbery, rape and murder have also been on the decline for the past several years. But, the burglary numbers stand out since they had actually been on the rise between 2007 and 2008 and experts had expected that trend to continue as unemployment rose.
Richard Rosenfeld a sociologist at the University of Missouri who has studied crime trends said that crime rates, particular property crimes, typically rise during a recession.
"We've seen that in every single recession in the U.S. since the ‘50s," he said. "I would have expected by now some upward movement in burglary numbers."
The falling price of copper and other scrap materials may have had some effect on this trend and not as many people are stripping copper pipes out of foreclosure properties as they once did. But, this alone does not account for the drop in overall burglaries.
More likely than not, the presence of warm bodies in the home rather than empty residences may be behind this phenomenon.
As we watch with concern over the increase in jobless numbers, could this recent trend be a bright spot in the recession?
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