Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Express Kidnapping

Graeme Wood has written a post on crime in Mexico City and Cairo that raises broader questions.

The signature act of thievery is the "express kidnapping," which elevates the streetside stick-up to the level of grand theft. The victim is taken from cash machine to cash machine and forced to empty his accounts. Since his bank likely places a daily limit on his withdrawals, the kidnappers often keep him past midnight to get a second day of cash. They may even activate networks of accomplices in the banks, to reset the daily limit for a third or fourth harvest of withdrawals. When the account is depleted, the victim's credit cards fund high-end buys at Walmart or elsewhere, till finally the victim is left free and bankrupt. This sort of criminal spree (sometimes called a "millionaire's tour") happens on the order of half a dozen times daily in Mexico City.

I suppose what shocks me is that this sort of crime — high-reward and not more than medium-risk — does not happen more in America, and at all in most other great cities. I have never heard of ATM theft at all in Cairo, and though it happens in New York, I have never heard it described as such a developed industry anywhere else.

I've often wondered the same thing. This is one of many reasons why I think we'd do well to replace a mass incarceration approach to crime control with one focused on more effective crime prevention strategies, including sharply increasing the number of police. Thus far, we haven't seen a spike in crime in major American cities despite the economic downturn. But the costs of crime remain staggeringly high and very unevenly distributed. Apart from the direct costs, there are indirect costs ranging from the relative decline of cities versus suburbs to stress levels in high-crime neighborhoods that contribute to various maladies.

In the post, Wood also offers some insight into his scrupulous journalistic methods.

The most garrulous character in the park was Andreas Montecristo, a tenor and auto mechanic who told me his thoughts on crime in exchange for a half a packet of fried plantains. 

09/01 06:09 PMShare