Bank Robbing a Terrible Business, Statistically 207
isoloisti writes "Three UK economists got access to national data on bank robberies. The conclusion is that robbing banks pays, but not very much. Average take is about $19k per person per robbery. But, there's a 20% chance of being caught per raid. To make an average income, a robber needs to do two jobs per year, and has greater than 50% chance to be in the slammer after 2 years."
Stupid thieves (Score:5, Funny)
Banking, on the other hand...
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a person a gun, and the can rob a bank
Give a person a bank, and the can rob a country.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Funny)
You're twice the the he ever was!
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Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Funny)
Give them a political office and they can rob both.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give them a political office, and they can accept money from the bank ...so the bank can legally rob a country
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Give them a political office, and they can accept money from the bank ...so the bank can legally rob a country
Rob a country, and the cities fall into ruins, leaving the people with no hope, no education, and driving them to desperate acts such as robbing banks. The cycle is complete.
All of this has happened before (Score:3)
Rob a country, and the cities fall into ruins, leaving the people with no hope, no education, and driving them to desperate acts such as robbing banks. The cycle is complete.
All of this has happened before, and and all of this will happen again...
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Give them a political office and they can rob both.
And get paid to do it...
and get medical benefits...
and retirement!
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a person a bank, and the can rob a country.
Absolutely, when there is no one watching what you are doing and the regulations are off the rails...it makes robbing a countryand its people so easy.
Just loan on the front and bet against those loans on the back...then ask for a bailout when things come crashing down (which banks knew would happen) and reward your board with big bonuses courtesy of the tax payers you already robbed...isn't double dipping great...especially against the middle class and poor.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
this is too earnestly true to read as proper sarcasm.
i need a drink.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Realize that today a lot of banks don't handle the physical money - they only handle digital money, so being a bank robber is soon futile.
To get cash you need to stand in the ATM queue.
The downside is that robbing a supermarket can give a better payoff.
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Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Informative)
No, the cash in an ATM does not come from the bank. It comes from a cash vault at a central depository in secured canisters via an armored car. Nobody at the branch (including the armored car delivery guy) physically touches any of the cash that goes into the ATM. The people at the depository are guarded by guns; robbing a depository would be a bit more difficult than robbing the cash from a drawer at a branch bank.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
"Which is the greater crime, to rob a bank or to own one?" --Bertold Brecht
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The answer is to rob a bank of-course.
Owning a bank is a business, like any other, except when government gets involved, guarantees the debt that is taken (FDIC), guarantees the credit and loans that are given out (FHA, F&F), creates environment where giving out fake loans is profitable (Fed, IRS, FHA, F&F, FDIC, HUD, all of this).
Banks are businesses, saying that a business is 'crime' is strange at least, since people use them voluntarily (until again, gov't makes it impossible not to use one).
The
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except when government gets involved...
You mean this government [wikipedia.org]???
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What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe [independent.co.uk]
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saying that a business is 'crime' is strange at least, since people use them voluntarily
People get into Ponzi schemes voluntarily too. I don't think this is a good argument.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is not. A bank has power over an economy that no other institution can match.
LOL. Tell that to the drug dealers, oh, everywhere.
You are getting confused about "criminal" versus "illegal." Criminal is criminal, no matter the law. Illegal is when the law recognizes that something is criminal. But many businesses are actively criminal in that they steal from their customers, and actively harm their communities. The law has simply been bought to permit them to behave this way. Doesn't make it any less reprehensible.
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No, it is not. A bank has power over an economy that no other institution can match.
- not in a free market economy. In a gov't controlled fake money, fake credit, fake insurance economy, with huge impossible to service debts - yes.
In a free market economy? Absolutely not, a bank is just another business - storing people's deposits that are not to be loaned out and making loans with deposits that can be loaned out, where the client of the bank is informed that his deposit is partially loaned out but he is making some interest on it. And of-course in case of making loans without gov't invo
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My point is that a business that satisfies consumer demand (and I did put the word VOLUNTARY there, by the way), is not a crime.
What consumer demanded securities based on loans that were known to be over 90% fraudulent?
Banking doesn't have to be a criminal enterprise, but as long as they're allowed to get away with stuff like that, it will be.
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Didn't you read what I wrote?
It's a gov't system that created this problem. Gov't provides fake banking insurance - FDIC. There are no assets there, it's all 'guaranteed' with printed money or at best with taxes (which is also ridiculous, it's redistribution of wealth from some people to others because why? Gov't isn't supposed to backstop bad business behaviour, a bank loses money, a car company goes bust, whatever, it's a private matter).
Gov't destroys the currency by printing the shit out of it, its val
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because banks never collapsed before the FDIC. There were never any bubbles before the creation of the Fed.
If you actually look at history, the period between the great depression and the 1980s were among the least financially turbulent in history. We learned our lessons after the great depression, and that served us well for 50 years until "free market" types like yourself decided banks didn't need to be regulated.
Were there bubbles in the meantime? Yes, but they were far milder than they would have been otherwise.
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Stagflation isn't a depression. Relative to the great depression, and the crisis we're in today, the 1970s were a speedbump. I'm not ignorant of our history, I just view it in context.
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Again, small potatoes compared to the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the numerous recessions that occured in the 1800s.
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Also, there's nothing voluntary about losing your job because your employer can't get a short term loan to cover your paycheck because their bank didn't have enough cash in reserve.
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>> Give a person a bank, and the can rob a country.
If you look at the USC 1-201 (4) a bank is "means any person engaged in the business of Banking."
If you understand banking as the holding and trading of notes or other instruments, we are all banks. And since we most often trade notes or instruments that are issued or backed by the Federal Reserve Bank, our banks are technically all subsidiaries of the Federal Reserve Bank.
Has anyone here ever tried exchanging notes or instruments that are of your o
Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I RTFA but I didn't see any reference to the general intelligence of the robbers. From what I've always understood, intelligent bank robbers are generally not caught while those who just wandering into a bank with a paper sank and a finger gun end up getting busted quickly. You know, because they make it obvious who they are.
Re:Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent bank robbers get government bailouts, and don't go to PMITA prison.
Silly bank robbers use a mask and a gun, and have much worse outcomes.
Re:Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Interesting)
My suspicion is that the white collar or "intelligent" robberies are not included in the statistical sampling the authors were allowed to draw upon. Things like electronic fraud, employee skimming, loan fraud, etc - which net the culprits millions and are not made public because they impune upon the bank's integrity far more then some guy with a gun in his pocket.
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From what I have seen, it all comes down to the frequency with which you attempt to do it. There was someone in LA that was hitting a bank or two every week that wasn't caught until their 9th attempt.
Re:Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't just slap a single probability on a type of crime like this.
There are so many varying factors in getting caught, intelligence being a huge game changer.
Of course you can, just like you can slap a single probability on the chances of getting cancer, even though there are many factors that affect and even dominate an individual's chances.
That's the way statistics work. They tell you the average, but any individual trial (whether in the sense of a bank robber's take or a roll of the dice) may fall far outside of the average.
Of course when talking human behavior you the individual have control over some of the factors so you shouldn't just go with the statistics like you would at Vegas. Which is what most criminals seeing this statistic will do -- tell themselves that they are above average and can make bank robbery pay off. Of course they aren't going to get caught. They're too smart.
And then 20% of them do and become another statistic.
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In this case, the stats say the average robber is caught 19% of the time. Does this mean that all robbers get caught 19% of the time? Maybe it means that the vast majority of robbers people are caught 99% if the time, and there's one really slick cat (I'm thinking the cat burglar guy from the Simpsons; that guy was a shifty shifter, f'real
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This comment is such delicious transpositionbeep.
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I WILL PIE ALL OF YOUR EATS, GOOD SIR.
And my beep was a beep of delight. Ain't no profanity up in here.
Feel up instead! You're clever and you deserve it. :D
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And my beep was a beep of delight. Ain't no profanity up in here.
Feel up instead! You're clever and you deserve it. :D
I'm not sure what to make of this. All I can think of is that HapSlappy is being propositioned by a robot.
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You know why else averages are deceptive? With an average $19K take per person, it would appear that a mastermind could enormously increase the haul by bringing more underlings.
1000 of my friends and associates are going to knock off the corner bank tonight. I'm organizing the party, and will take a modest 10% administrative cut of the net instead of my regular share. That's nearly two million. More if I can make some additional friends by tonight.
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See, this is why conditional probability is important. The odds are conditional on what you know. Odds a random human has a uterus? 50%. Odds a random human has a uterus given that they are a male? 15%
The best way to rob a bank is to own one. (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way to rob a bank is to own one [amazon.com]. And it's only gotten better for the robber barons over the past 30 years.
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Investment itself is a thing of value, by making capital available for productive uses.
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The capital would be available for productive uses if it were not hoarded by the idle classes.
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So you don't know what investing is then.
Which is fine, but it seems a bit foolish to comment on it.
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Only if enables them to live without working. It would be more productive over all to make the capital available for the most useful purpose, and to make the capitalist do productive work for a living.
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Deciding how to invest one's money is productive work. If you think the government can do better I have a word for you: Solyndra.
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Deciding how to invest one's money is productive work.
Sure, it produces wealth for the investor. If it produces anything of value for anyone else, it's at best a happy accident. More often we'd get a better value for the capital without rent seeking capitalists.
If you think the government can do better I have a word for you: Solyndra.
If you think the private sector can do better than the government, I have a bunch of words for you. The NIH, NASA, the US Armed Forces, the national interstate system, you
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Those "happy accidents" are actually carefully planned and executed business operations.
And yes, I think the private sector can do better than the government. Ben Franklin established libraries and postal services long before there was any government to subsidize them. Come to think of it, private industrialists built roads and railroads without government subsidies too.
Space/X and a number of other private space ventures are proving you wrong about NASA.
As for the armed services, I will agree with you and
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Those "happy accidents" are actually carefully planned and executed business operations.
Carefully planned to maximize returns to the shareholder, not to society as a whole.
Space/X and a number of other private space ventures are proving you wrong about NASA.
Only by building on decades of government research.
And with regards to the private investment banking system, I give you John Corzine, Obama fundraiser, bundler, and investment swindler extraordinaire.
True enough. Corzine should be in federal PMITA pris
Successful Bank Robbers... (Score:4, Informative)
Know what you are doing [officer.com].
In the US there are very few large scale organizations that are not businesses, and violence is bad for business; there is not that much of it. A good example of this kidnapping, extortion, protection rackets, are usually small-scale. There are other occupations that are safer and easier to gouge people out of money so it never reaches the scales that it does like in Mexico.
If the poverty line gets low enough combined with severe cuts in local services, it would not surprise me to see this trend be reversed.
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In the US there are very few large scale organizations that are not businesses, and violence is bad for business; there is not that much of it. A good example of this kidnapping, extortion, protection rackets, are usually small-scale.
Then explain the government's War on Drug Users. It turns out kidnapping and extorting harmless pot smokers is very good for business.
Use hacking skills (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, something to deter people from robbing ba (Score:5, Funny)
I feel certain all persons considering robbing banks will study this statistical data and after due and sober consideration, be dissuaded from such high-risk, low-reward enterprise.
Credit Cards and ATM's (Score:2)
Not any more.
Credit cards mean banks no longer have the money.
ATM machines mean most of the money is locked away in safes - and spread out over many branches, convenience stores, etc.
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The money is in retirement and institutional accounts. That's why there are so many people who are filthy rich from "working" Wall Street.
Re:Credit Cards and ATM's (Score:5, Funny)
ATM machines mean most of the money is locked away in safes - and spread out over many branches, convenience stores, etc.
This [wikimedia.org] is an ATM.
This [aliimg.com] is an ATM machine!
So you won't find any money inside of an ATM machine. ATM machines only build ATMs, so they are full of ATM parts. If you are after money, you should more likely go after the ATM itself.
And knowing is half of the battle!
Re:Credit Cards and ATM's (Score:4, Funny)
Lack Of Professionalism (Score:2)
The vast majority of bank robbers are unlikely to have developed a career plan, and sufficient training and study to buttress it. Rather, they tend to be running on desperation. When someone(s) go on a bank robbing spree, it's usually a sign they've reached some sort of crisis in their lives, and aren't really thinking things through.
Pervasive video surveillance makes life difficult for the modern retail robber, just as it would for traders making heavily leveraged bets at trading desks in the CBD offices.
Ignores who is robbing the bank (Score:2)
The trouble is many criminals are criminals because they haven't got the good upstairs to support more gainful employment. Has anyone done a study to determine how the intelligence of those convicted of bank robbery and related crimes compares with society as a whole?
My guess they are below average. So its no surprise they are not terribly successful at it. Its not likely they'd be terribly at anything that requires deep analysis. Its sorta like how robbers always love guns that use clips. If you going
still better odd than (Score:2)
Three UK economists got access to national data on bank robberies... Average take is about $19k per person per robbery.
... getting paid off with a degree in Economy
Crime pays. (Score:2)
Of course, it pays the banks more than the bank robbers. Same basic principle though.
unskilled labor (Score:4, Interesting)
So the question is bank robbery good for unskilled labor. Lets say that you pull five jobs in a year, get convicted for the last one, and get five years in prison. The robber is in jail, room and board taken care of, but the family might have 80K in unreported funds. If they are somewhat smart, they will get government assistance as well as the 13K a year average. OTOH, if the robber is less responsible they have had a lifestyle for a year that few unskilled people can have. And only worked a few weeks at most.
Sure for those of us with jobs and skills it seems a bit silly, but there a lot of people for whom 20K seems like a fortune. This is why I think that such analysis are not very useful. It does not speak to the basic root fo the crime.
Who did the math? (Score:2, Funny)
Did the same banker who calculates interests calculate the changes of getting caugh.
One raid, 20% change of getting caught, you need two raids a year, and that increases changes to over 50%, WTF!?
Re:Who did the math? (Score:5, Informative)
One raid, 20% change of getting caught, you need two raids a year, and that increases changes to over 50%, WTF!?
TFA claims that doing two raids a year gives you a greater than 50% chance of getting caught within 2 years (i.e., 4 raids). Let's check the math...
After 1 raid you have a 100% - 20% = 80% chance of eluding capture.
After 2 raids, it's 80% ^ 2 = 64%
After 3 raids, it's 80% ^ 3 = 51.2%
After 4 raids, it's 80% ^ 4 = 40.96%
100% - 40.96% chance of not getting caught = 59.04% chance of getting caught, which is in fact over 50%.
Three Hots and a Cot (Score:2)
$19k per job plus a 20% chance of winning free room and board for a few years doesn't sound so bad. Sign me up!
Re:Three Hots and a Cot + healthcare (Score:2)
Don't forget healthcare. What happened to that man who wasn't given prison after purposely robbing a back to get healthcare? He said he'd do it again.
I'm Confused.... (Score:2)
...if bank robbing is such a terrible business then why do the banks continue doing it?
Quality of Life? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Doing it WRONG !! (Score:2)
what you should do if you want to rob a bank is get hired as an exec at one and then get paid way to much.
Rob a Bank and the SS will be chatting with you Rob a Bank Company and .....
Damn! (Score:2)
simply put, don't do hands-on jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
You can make lotsa money at gas stations, don't be the one behind the counter (be an executive in one of their high rise offices)
You can make lotsa money stealing cash, don't be the one handling the cash (be one of them Wall St businessmen that lie, cheat, and steal from people everyday).
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Looks like you missed being first by a few seconds, haus.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. I recall a TV interview with I believe an ex-FBI agent discussing the "does crime pay?" topic. His answer was short and simple. "If you're going to do it, do it once and do it big." The smart criminals that do one and only one big job that sets them for life or years are rarely caught. It's the smaller-time ones that keep going back for more that end up getting caught.
Even at 20% odds, it probably makes sense. If you have a 80% chance of being set for life, vs a 20% chance of being locked up for a few years, it's easy to see where those with an obviously poor future consider crime.
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Yep, robbing a bank doesn't get you much.
If you want cash, the money is in an end-of-day armored car robbery. There's a high risk, and a good chance you're going to have to kill a few people, but the payoff can be millions. You're going to need a lot of surveillance time to find the routes, a biggish truck with a Faraday cage in case there's any tracking devices (and the same thing in your warehouse when you unload), and a good way to launder large quantities of cash. Wouldn't hurt to have several good r
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Re:Heat the movie (Score:3)
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I don't know how many white collar prisons are still around (at least in the US). Former Gov Blagojevich is in the same prison that once housed Timothy McVeigh for instance (in the middle of suburban Denver with a nice view of the mountains).
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That's the gist of what they taught in security class when I was a programmer for a bank, way back when. We called it "Bank Robbery 101" because it mostly just talked about ways in which banks had been robbed and how they fixed their procedures so that they wouldn't be robbed the same way again.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:4, Funny)
Not if you're stealing a red stapler.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some generations hence, people will tell stories to children where the mean, greedy third little pig is the villain because he did not build houses for the other two little pigs and the wolf.
I think Ayn Rand already wrote that fairy tale. The difference was that when she tried it, it was over 1,000 pages long.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was an A is A objectivist for a while; I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged the first time around. When I started seeing some personal success, I saw that hard work does not always equal success; many of the brightest and talented hard workers I knew got fucked, not rewarded, and it's often a crapshoot or who you know more than talent and hard work. You get up and try again if you're good at it and enjoy what you do, so that part is true, but talent doesn't rise simply because it's talented. Objectivism is an ideal, just like sharing the communist wealth means everybody gets a fair shake is an ideal.
It was a nice life lesson; I know now that anybody advocating the extreme is pushing an ideal on you, not a true way to live your life. Hard work, living a happy life, and helping others when you are both able and willing to do so is the way to go; and if you get some sort of crazy good benefits offered to you along the way, pounce like a puma.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that hard work and talent often don't equal success on the first try doesn't mean they don't equal success. It just means that there's a large element of randomness in play at all times, and even hard work and talent don't necessarily give you high odds of success in any one endeavor. However, hard work and talent do tilt the odds in your favor, so -- except for people who get extraordinarily unlucky -- hard work, talent and persistence do equal success. On balance, I'd say that persistence is the most important of those traits, followed by hard work, with talent coming in a distant third. Which isn't to say talent isn't valuable -- in many cases it's essential. But it's almost never enough.
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The disingenuous part of Atlas Shrugged, though, is how the protagonists' typical setbacks (or rather, plot vehicles to illustrate their persistence) were caused by the no-talent leechers. Dagny spent a TON of time wrestling with her brother's stupid decisions, holding back the tide through talent, persistence, and hard work. The real world is simply
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Extremes are easy... So people tend to like them. Toeing the objectivist line gives a really defined set of values, clear set of right and wrong. It doesn't take much
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I quite liked Atlas Shrugged too, and it's one of those books that I think everyone should read once in their life (though I do recommend skipping the radio speech - that was the one part of the book I found unremittingly dull). I don't really think Ayn Rand's solution stands up, but her critique of communism is pretty spot-on - which, after all, is what she had experience with. What I wanted to see was how Galt's Gulch was working after a generation, and what happened to the money all the first generation
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Usually when I hear about bank robbers getting caught in the US, they were doing it to pay for their meth addiction. People on meth are extremely erratic - the tenant I had tore apart a giant teddy bear and tried to flush its head down the toilet and then ran around throwing bear innards everywhere. She lied that she had a job, didn't pay her rent until evicted, and left the place a mess. She also refused rehab (according to her mom, a coworker of my wife). Last I heard she was arrested for shoplifting.
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What, exactly, do you think everyone on Wall Street is actually doing? Of course it's a con game.
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Just tell them you're working for Senator Bob Dole. He takes out that much cash every couple of weeks so that nobody can track what or how he spends his money.
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Actually, if you are robbing 4 banks a year, then you have 3 month prep time for each job. If you spend even part of that time for prep work, then you are WAY above average for a bank robber. In fact, the stats around a significant number of robberies are probably around people that did VERY little preperation. On top of that, there are probably people who did back-to-back robberies like idiots.
That "economists" need to be better statisticians. How much does it pay to rob a bank that you do at least a m
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That "economists" need to be better statisticians. How much does it pay to rob a bank that you do at least a month's prep work for?
There's no problem with the statistics. £19,000 per person is the total average. If well-prepared bank robbers make more than average, then badly prepared bank robbers will make less than average.
Re:Doing The Math...Not intelligence (Score:2)
And remember it is not whether or not you are above average intelligence, you have to be an above average criminal to hopefully not get caught.
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To do a variation on the old joke: "What? Are you crazy? Even if you plan extra hard, you can't outsmart the police!"
"No, but I can outsmart you."
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Doesn't quite work.
A bear will quit once it has caught the slow person, while the cops will try to arrest every single person who is even remotely associated with a robbery. And those who they do catch will help the cops catch you so that they will get a shorter sentence for co-operating.
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Right, but a criminal can be "smart" enough to betray his accomplice and pin the crime on him.
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Having anyone who knows you committed the crime is a liability, whether they are in jail or not.
And if you did set up your accomplice it might not just be the cops you have to look out for.
If going the pin the crime on him route do it in a way that the accomplice ends up dead, it will be harder for him to defend himself in court that way.
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I wonder if this study takes into account the robbers increasing in efficiency and effectiveness with each successive robbery. I know they have a 1 in 5 chance of being caught, but is their 10th robbery as sloppy as the previous 9? I tend to get better at my job, but does this apply to bank robbers? This is likely assuming they don't raise the stakes with each successive robbery, which they tend to do.
If the average bank robber in the average bank robbery has a 20% chance of being caught, and if bank robbers get better and less likely to be caught with experience, then it follows that your chances at getting caught in your first robbery are much higher than 20%.
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But as a potential career, it doesn't really make sense unless you can find a successful bank robber who you can trust to show you how to do it without getting caught. If you were starting out on your own, you chances would be better than 20% of getting caught on your first try. Also, if you develop a particularly effective method, it's only a matter of time before the banks catch on, so you'd have to be an innovative thinker to stay ahead of them.
There are better, more dishonest unskilled ways to make a li