ABSTRACT
The focus in most studies of criminology is typically on highly visible and violent crime. Murder and its prohibition are probably culturally universal (Rachels, 1999). But what of pickpocketing, shoplifting, and other more common but less glamorous crimes? In the case of pickpocketing in the United States, the increased use of debit and credit cards, heightened surveillance, more severe penalties, dismantling of the previously existing system of apprenticeship in the pickpocketing trade, and also the increased availability of firearms and the consequent increase in armed robberies led to pickpocketing dropping from sight between 1970 and 2010 (NPR Staff, 2011). However, worldwide, pickpocketing is viewed—at least by online travel advisors—as ubiquitous (Potter, 2016).
