Holiday Thefts: Here's Where It Is And Is Not A Big Problem

It’s probably not a surprise that burglars and thieves love Christmas because package deliveries on porches and doorsteps are such easy pickings. And they’re just waiting at holiday celebrations to relieve you of your wallet or handbag. Larceny during December is 22 percent higher than the average rate for larceny than all months combined, according to national statistics.

Property crimes are actually at their lowest during the winter, according to Janet Lauritsen, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, who co-authored a report for the Department of Justice in 2014.

Still, with so many people filling their vehicles with shopping bags and receiving package deliveries when they’re not home, December is prime hunting time for porch pirates and others, Lauritsen told Vice when asked about the flurry of police warnings that circulate this time of year.

She calculated 10 years of data and summarized the monthly totals for all different types of crimes, and noted an increase in robbery and personal larceny — the types of crimes police issue warnings about.

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“What I can see in this in data are patterns where January and February are extraordinarily low, but that December is a bit higher than average — about 20 percent than the average of all months combined,” Lauritsen told Vice in 2015.

The home security solutions provider Vivint updated Lauritsen’s numbers, tallying the number of reported thefts from Nov. 1-Jan. 30 from 2012-2016, as reported to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, then divided the tallies by each state’s estimated 2012 population. With the updated numbers, larcenies are 22 percent higher in during December than in all other months combined, Vivint said.

The top 10 and bottom 10 states were reported. (Illinois and Florida weren’t included due to data reporting issues, and NIBRS data may not include all U.S. crime data because law enforcement agencies voluntarily report it.)

According to that analysis, the states with the fewest December thefts are:

1. New York
2. Vermont
3. Mississippi
4. South Dakota
5. New Hampshire
6. Idaho
7. New Jersey
8. Connecticut
9. West Virginia
10. Massachusetts

The states with the most December thefts (from most to least) are:

1. Washington
2. New Mexico
3. South Carolina
4. Georgia
5. Arizona
6. Texas
7. Louisiana
8. Tennessee
9. Delaware
10. Arkansas

The analysis looked at the three types of theft: larceny (stealing or attempting to steal without breaking into a building or threatening a victim, including pickpocketing and breaking into a car); burglary (unlawfully entering someone else’s property, with a key or by force, to steal possessions or commit any other crime); and robbery (stealing or attempting to steal property from a victim under threat of violence or violence).

Some highlights from the data:

• Larceny is the most common type of property crime during the festive winter season, with an average of 7,708 instances per month — as compared to the least common type, robbery, which averages 80 instances per month.
• New York state has the lowest rate of holiday larceny and burglary and the fifth lowest rate of holiday auto theft in the country. That’s surprising given that 1 million people head to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, which would seem to be a prime time for pickpockets.
• New York ranks higher for robberies than for the other three types of theft — larceny, burglary and auto theft — but it still ranks relatively low, 32nd among 48 states.
• In Washington State, which has the highest holiday theft rate, residents are least likely to experience larceny than the other three types of theft. The data show that 5.6 residents in every 1,000 reported larceny incidents during the holiday season, leaving 72.3 reports of auto theft, home break-ins and robbery.
• In California, an average of 41,499 auto thefts are reported during the holiday season. Extrapolated, that means nearly half of San Bernardino households would have their cars stolen between Halloween and Valentine’s Day every year.

For the complete study, go here.

(AP Photo/Robert Bumsted)