 "Freakonomics")
WHEN TO ROB A BANK: A Rogue Economist’s Guide to the World
Author: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane
Pages: 387
Price: Rs 625
We have always been attracted to crime — not doing it, necessarily, but exploring it. One of the most-talked-about subjects in Freakonomics was our argument that the legalization of abortion was responsible for driving down crime twenty years later. Our love of crime almost landed us a network TV show, almost got one of us sent to Guantanamo Bay, and did inspire the title of this book.
When to Rob a Bank
Stephen J Dubner
I recently read about a man who robbed six banks in New Jersey but only on Thursdays. “No reason was given for choosing that particular day,” the article noted. Perhaps he knew something about how the banks did business; perhaps his astrologist told him Thursdays were lucky; perhaps it simply fit his schedule.
In any case, it reminded me of a story I heard upon a recent visit to Iowa, about a local bank employee named Bernice Geiger. She was arrested in 1961 for embezzling more than $2 million over many years. The bank happened to be owned by her father. Bernice was reportedly very generous, giving away lots of the stolen money. Upon her arrest, the bank went bust. She was sent to prison, paroled after five years, and moved back in with her parents, who were apparently forgiving types.
By the time she was arrested, Geiger was said to be exhausted. Why? Because she never took vacations. This turned out to be a key component in her crime. As the story goes — this was told to me by a retired Sioux City cop, though I haven’t been able to confirm it — the reason she never took vacations was that she was keeping two sets of books and couldn’t risk a fill-in employee discovering her embezzlement.
The most interesting part, according to the cop, is that after prison Geiger went to work for a banking oversight agency to help stop embezzlement. Her biggest contribution: looking for employees who failed to take vacations. This simple metric turned out to have strong predictive power in stopping embezzlement. Like cheating schoolteachers or colluding sumo wrestlers, the people who steal money from banks sometimes leave telltale patterns — whether it’s a lack of vacation or a string of Thursdays — that point the finger right at them.
All this made me curious about bank-robbery statistics in general. Maybe Thursday really is the best day to rob a bank?
According to the FBI, there are roughly 5,000 bank robberies a year in the US Friday is easily the busiest weekday (there are relatively few robberies on the weekend), with 1,042 Friday robberies in a year; this is followed by Tuesday (922), Thursday (885), Monday (858), and Wednesday (842). But there is no evidence that any one day is more likely to be successful than another.
It also appears as though robbers are not very good at maximizing their return. Morning robberies yield far more money than afternoon robberies ($5,180 versus $3,705) and yet bank robbers are far more prone to strike in the afternoon. (Maybe they like to sleep in? And maybe if they were able to wake up earlier and go to work, they wouldn't have to rob banks?) Overall, US bank robbers earn an average of $4,120 when they are successful. But they aren’t successful as often as I would have thought: they are arrested 35 per cent of the time! So the Jersey robber who made it to his sixth Thursday was ahead of the pack.
The success rate of bank robbers in the UK is about the same as in the US, but British robbers generally get a lot more money. The economists Barry Reilly, Neil Rickman, and Robert Witt got hold of a trove of robbery data from the British Bankers’ Association and analyzed it for a paper in Significance, a publication of the Royal Statistical Society. They found that the average proceeds from all bank raids, including the unsuccessful ones, was roughly $30,000. Robberies with multiple robbers, they note, tend to yield considerably bigger jackpots. Overall, the average raid yields about $18,000 per robber. So that’s substantially higher than their American counterparts. But again, the likelihood of arrest is high. This leads the authors to conclude that “the return on an average bank robbery is, frankly, rubbish” and that “as a profitable occupation, bank robbery leaves a lot to be desired.”
So if we want to know when is the best time to rob a bank, the answer would seem to be... never. Unless, of course, you happen to work at one. But even then, the tradeoff is steep — for you may have to give up vacations forever.
What's the Real Crime Rate in China?
Steven D Levitt
Official statistics would certainly suggest that crime in China is extremely low. Murder rates are roughly one-fifth as high as in the United States; according to the official crime statistics, all crimes are rare. China certainly feels safe. We walked the streets in rich areas and poor areas and not for a moment did I ever feel threatened. Graffiti was completely absent. The one instance where I thought I finally found some graffiti near a train station in the city of Shangrao, the spray-painted message on a bridge turned out to be a government warning that anyone caught defecating under the bridge would be severely punished.
Yet there were all sorts of odd behaviors that made it seem like some crimes were a big problem.
First, there seemed to be an obsession with the risk of counterfeit money. Our tour guides felt the need to teach us how to identify fake money. Whenever I bought something with currency, the shopkeeper went through a variety of tricks to validate the legitimacy of the bills.
Second, when checking out of some of our hotels, there was a fifteen-minute delay while a hotel worker went to inspect the vacated hotel room, I presume to look for stolen clocks, towels, and mini-bar items…
Third, places that no sensible person would ever want to break into (for instance, orphanages) were protected by guardhouses and metal gates that had to be retracted to let vehicles in. I don't think the gates were to keep the orphans in, but maybe they were!
Fourth, on the trains we took, they checked our tickets before we boarded, while we were riding the train, and also required that the ticket be produced on the way out of the station.
Finally, and most notably, public restrooms were completely devoid of toilet, even in some reasonably nice restaurants. Again, maybe I’m completely missing something, but the impression was that a) toilet paper was a very valuable commodity; and b) if it were left in public restrooms it would be stolen.
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books
