Stupid criminals

At work, I was having a discussion with a (smart) co-worker about stupid criminals. I came to the conclusion that I think there are two distinct levels of people in relation to commiting crimes.

There are those who are very smart and know a great deal (if not almost everything) about every aspect of a potential crime. These people probably get away with a lot of criminal acts. These types of people know the risks involved and play the odds to their benefit. Into this category I’ll also toss people who are smart enough to know the odds are against them. They realize that the police have forensic science and advanced investigation techniques and they probably would only evade the law before eventually being caught. This entire group, in my opinion, makes up a small minority of people caught committing crimes. Mostly because they know better or because they have specific knowledge that allows them to get away with it most of the time.

The second set of people are those who never even imagine that law enforcement officers could do something like find fingerprints on a plastic trash bag that’s been sitting in the dump for two weeks. They think the police are stupid or that they are smart enough to outwit anyone or deceive forensic investigators. Some probably never even consider the actual odds of success, or they are ignorant of what they are actually pitting themselves against when they commit a crime. Granted, some level of success can be reached by sheer willpower and viciousness, but that only serves to create more and more evidence used to capture and convict them. Their success is also helped by the sheer number of criminal acts relative to theirs. It can take months to process evidence for non-important crimes. Sometimes manpower is so short that criminals just “go free” because no one has the time to go back and do the legwork on something that isn’t a high profile crime.

So, ultimately, this was an exercise in trying to understand why criminals do stupid things. I don’t think they do by nature of being a crook. I just think that stupid people do stupid things and comitting crimes tends to be one of them.

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