Double standards?

There are a lot of thieves about. And, mostly they're small-time crooks. Theft of property valued at less than $5,000 is by far the most common crime in our society. It's also the one for which you are least likely to get caught - police only solve one or two small-scale thefts out of ten, and only 17% of break and enters. And, victim surveys suggest that for every property crime that is reported to police, 2.6 property crimes go unreported. You'd almost get the impression that not many people care about theft.

There were 400,000 break-ins in Canada in 1995; that's 1,096 a day; 45 an hour. Six out of ten break-ins occur in residences. Semi-detached, row houses, and duplexes are more frequently targets than single, detached homes. Aside from loose cash and jewelry, thieves usually go for televisions, VCRs, and stereos. Summertime is the peak season for break-ins, particularly during holiday weekends. The owners are away; the neighbours are away. For someone who knows what they're doing it takes seconds to break in.

Most of the bandits are young men between the ages of 14 and 22. They're in the business to get some quick cash for drugs. And, its "law-abiding" citizens who keep them in business. If there wasn't a ready market for stolen goods, the appeal of break-ins would diminish. But, there seem to be plenty of Canadians willing buy suspiciously low-cost consumer goods off the back of a truck; no questions asked.

This same easygoing approach to theft costs insurance companies millions. Insurers complain that some people treat their policies like slot machines; every claim is a potential jackpot. The insurance industry estimates that 10% to 15% of all claims are at least partly fraudulent, with the total bill adding up to $1.3 billion a year. Much of the fraud occurs when a claimant "pads" a legitimate claim after a fire or accident. Others use insurance policies as a way of financing home renovations. Need a new carpet in the living room? Get the kids to "accidentally" kick over a bucket of paint on the old one. The insurance adjuster inspects the mess and writes a cheque for a replacement. Sometimes cars get squashed into blocks of steel at a wrecker's yard; then the owner claims it's been stolen and collects the insurance money. By any definition, these activities are theft. And, insurance companies take a dim view of those who try to pull it off and get caught.

Businesses don't like to be ripped off by their employees either, but it happens all the time. A favourite is adding items to the expense account. Take the family out for pizza and claim it as entertaining a client. Add a few kilometres to the car allowance. Then, there's the small-scale pilfering; paper, pencils, envelopes, and other office supplies. There's the long distance phone call billed to the company to wish Grandma a happy birthday. Sometimes the stealing gets more organized and employees join together to form theft rings. Professor Jerald Greenberg at Ohio State University has studied this. He says such groups turn their companies into "schools of dishonesty" in which new employees are taught how to steal. And, the claim has been made that thieving is the cause of one out of every three business failures in the United States.

Despite the cost, there is a widespread feeling that this is not really a crime: "Lifting a CD-player off the production line is just a drop in the bucket. And, anyway, everybody does it." The same argument is applied to copyright rip offs, another form of theft that's tolerated by society at large. Computer software companies seem to suffer most in this area, but music, book, and magazine publishers get hit hard too.

Software piracy costs computer companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Someone buys a program, copies it, and passes it on to friends and colleagues. Software developers do what they can to stop this theft, but even the law doesn't seem to be on their side. David LaMacchia was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is alleged to have set up an Internet site that allowed anyone who accessed it to download a variety of software programs free of charge. Millions of dollars worth of software was copied and Mr. LaMacchia was charged. But, the judge threw the case out on the grounds that David LaMacchia had not personally profited from his escapade and had, therefore, committed no crime. However, there are people who profit big time in this field.

Copies of compact discs, videos, computer software, even designer clothes, watches, and pharmaceuticals are made on a commercial scale and sold in what's called the "grey market." This large-scale theft is said to cost the American economy as much as $100 billion a year. It's a market that wouldn't exist if there weren't millions of consumers ready to buy the