ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the different forms and patterns of property crime, our attitudes towards its perpetrators, the characteristics of different types of property crime offenders, issues surrounding the risk of victimisation and its distribution, and the impact of property crime on individuals and communities. From the 1830s onwards, crime in the UK has been classified into six main types: offences against the person, offences against property, offences against property, malicious offences against property, offences against the currency, and miscellaneous offences. The CRAVED nature of ‘hot products’ can be extended to the emergence of ‘new’ everyday property crimes such as bank or credit card fraud. Legislation and its enforcement were slow in keeping pace with the opportunities for large-scale theft, fraud and embezzlement provided by the expansion and development of the business and financial world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
