Bank Robbing a Terrible Business, Statistically

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."

Comments

Stupid thieves

[MRe_nl]

Banking, on the other hand...

Re:Stupid thieves

[jxander]

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

[Svippy]

You're twice the the he ever was!

Re:Stupid thieves

[Shivetya]

Give them a political office and they can rob both.

Re:Stupid thieves

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Bigby]

Give them a political office, and they can accept money from the bank ...so the bank can legally rob a country

Re:Stupid thieves

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:Stupid thieves

[Ellis D. Tripp]

"Which is the greater crime, to rob a bank or to own one?" --Bertold Brecht

Re:Stupid thieves

[spazdor]

this is too earnestly true to read as proper sarcasm.

i need a drink.

Re:Stupid thieves

[aaarrrgggh]

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

[SlippyToad]

Owning a bank is a business, like any other

No, it is not. A bank has power over an economy that no other institution can match.

saying that a business is 'crime' is strange at least,

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.

Re:Stupid thieves

[Hatta]

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.

Intelligence not a factor?

[garcia]

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?

[couchslug]

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?

[Chris Burke]

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.

Re:Intelligence not a factor?

[Presence2]

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.

Re:Everyone already knew this.

[v1]

If you're going to steal, steal big. The punishment is often nonexistent, and at worst you end up in a nice minimum security facility.

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.

Use hacking skills

[bhlowe]

Read How to rob a bank: A social engineering walkthrough, the more modern way. (Maybe this was on slashdot?)

Finally, something to deter people from robbing ba

[Blue Stone]

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.

Re:Everyone already knew this.

[PCM2]

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:Credit Cards and ATM's

[dissy]

ATM machines mean most of the money is locked away in safes - and spread out over many branches, convenience stores, etc.

This is an ATM.
This 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:Who did the math?

[Experiment 626]

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%.

Re:Everyone already knew this.

[HapSlappy_2222]

850 pages of railroad references, 100 pages of John galt repeating the same idea over the radio using all the biggest words Rand could come up with, and 50 pages of Dagny getting banged by Hank, Francisco, or good old Johnny. The movie version would be 10 minutes of moderate porn, but you'd have to get through 90 minutes of the cable guy stompin around the living room first.

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.