Portable Electronics and Trends in Goods Stolen from the Person

Abstract

Objectives: To better understand theft of portable electronic goods this study examined the type of goods stolen during theft and robbery in England and Wales over almost two decades.Methods: Using all sweeps of the Crime Survey for England and Wales between 1994 and 2010/11 the proportion of incidents where a particular item was stolen was calculated, then compared over time. Results: A small range of items accounted for the bulk of what was taken, namely cash, purses/wallets, credit/debit cards and mobile phones. Conclusions: Considerable changes to the stolen goods landscape were found, with a shift from more traditional items such as cash and purses/wallets to portable electronic items such as mobile phones.Recommendations are made for preventing the loss of the items most frequently stolen during offences of theft and robbery.Suggested key words: theft from the person; robbery; Crime Survey for England and Wales; mobile phones; stolen goods; hot products.

Explaining offenders’ longitudinal product-specific target selection through changes in disposability, availability, and value: an open-source intelligence web-scraping approach

“…This means that for overarching goods categories (e.g., gaming console) prices remain high, and they become locked in the growth and mass marketing stages of the life cycle-effectively prolonging or even preventing market saturation (Mailley et al, 2006). 2 Instead, specific makes and models of electronic consumer goods undergo their own unique life cycles, dubbed 'partial product life cycles' (Mailley et al, 2008;Shaw et al, 2015;Thompson, 2017;Wellsmith & Burrell, 2005). These specific makes and models of electronic consumer goods skip the traditional introduction stage as they enter the market with high consumer desirability and sales.…”