Prague, March 16 (CTK) – Czechs have all but stopped burgling banks as the number of burglaries plummeted from 176 in 2004 to 27 in 2015, which is largely due to an improving economic situation, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday, citing the police statistics.
Ten years ago, an armed robber broke into a bank, an exchange office or a post office, demanding money with the threat of violence on average every other day, MfD writes.
At present, the police deal with roughly two such cases a month, it adds.
Since 2013, when the number of burglaries in banks and post offices sharply fell, the decline has still continued, MfD writes.
Czechs are better off and no longer risk, Interior Ministry security analysts have said.
“The growth in the cases in the past years was associated especially with the recession and a worsening financial situation of a number of inhabitants,” the analysts said when explaining the situation in the 2014 report on the Czech Republic’s security.
“We predicted that if the overall economic situation improves and the economic growth resumes, the occurrence of this negative social phenomenon will decline,” they added.
“The assumption was confirmed,” the analysts said.
Obviously, this was no random oscillation and the trend continues, MfD writes.
However, there are other reasons for it, too.
“This is certainly also due to the intensification of various security measures such as CCTVs,” Alena Maresova, from the Institute for Criminology and Social Prevention (IKSP), is quoted as saying.
“The perpetrators are deterred from the burglaries both by stiff punishments in the subsequent trial and the uncertain result of a burglary because banks spend a great deal of money on the protection of their branches both in the sphere of technological measures and personnel,” Pavel Stepanek, chairman of the Czech Bank Association, is quoted as saying.
In addition, different people armed with pistols break into banks now than ten years ago, MfD writes.
IKSP experts say a decade ago, there were many businesspeople who went bust among them. Now it is different. The statistics records fewer people who are called “first offenders” in the police jargon. Most crime is committed by repeat criminals, MfD writes.
People aged 30-40 make up most of the burglars, it adds. These are mostly repeat criminals for whom burglaries are a sort of “lifestyle,” it adds.
The good news about the falling crime rate in this sphere is outbalanced by rising crime in other spheres, MfD writes.
Criminals now tend to prefer various frauds, primarily cyber crime, it adds.
