Not only do studies show that a recession tends to go hand-in-hand with an increase in crime, the inability of local and state police departments to deal with the rise can be attributed to budget costs due to the bad economy.
Cuts in funding, which have been seen in law enforcement agencies across the country, hinder officers from effectively stemming the rising tide of crime.
"We know that when police departments saw increases in violent crime in 2005 and 2006, they were able to respond quickly by using overtime to flood crime hot spots with additional patrols and sending specialized units in," stated Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). "This helped to bring crime back down again in 2007 and the first half of 2008. The threat posed by the economic crisis is that a lot of departments will no longer have these options available to keep crime and violence down."
Has our dismal economy, "the worst economic and financial crisis in decades", according to Reuters, caused an uptick in crime? According to PERF, the answer is yes.
Of the 100 agencies PERF studied in 2009 who linked crime rises to the economic crisis, 39% said they had seen an increase in robberies, 32% noted an uptick in burglaries and 40% saw an increase in thefts from vehicles.
In 2010, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program:
- Burglary accounted for 23.8% of the estimated number of property crimes committed in 2010.
- Of all burglaries, 60.5% involved forcible entry, 33.2% were unlawful entries (without force), and the remainder (6.3%) were forcible entry attempts.
- Victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $4.6 billion in lost property in 2010; overall, the average dollar loss per burglary offense was $2,119.
- Burglaries of residential properties accounted for 73.9% of all burglary offenses.
With the current state of the economy it is more important than ever to be vigilant in protecting your home and your loved ones. You can never be too safe, and thinking it could never happen to you could be a costly, and heartbreaking, mistake. The FBI reports that over 1.5 million homes are burglarized every year – don't allow yourself to become a statistic. Protect your property today.
