Section V: special reports

Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, Annual, 2002

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The second most prevalent days are Monday and Tuesday. The NIBRS reports a few more incidents on Monday than on Tuesday and BCS reports the opposite. Still, these differences are negligible and speak well for the integrity of the NIBRS data.

Most bank robberies from 1996 through 2000 happened on workdays, Monday through Friday, with very few occurring on the weekend. The NIBRS reports that workdays accounted for 89.83 percent of bank robbery incidents, while in the BCS the percentage was 93.85 percent for the period.

Time of day

Both the NIBRS data and the BCS data show that the time period during which most bank robberies occur is 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. Table 5.4 and Figure 5.3 present the time of occurrence of bank robberies reported in the NIBRS and BCS from 1996 through 2000 as a percentage of bank robbery incidents reported. The prominent detail presented here is the clear similarity of the two databases on this variable.

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Weapons, violence, injury, and other crimes

One obvious reason for an individual to engage in bank robbery is economic where the motive is to obtain money. Another is that because of the low amounts of cash actually stolen per robbery, bank robbers are interested in projecting a persona of violence. (8) Whichever is the case, the threat of violence is always present. Information on weapons used in the commission of a bank robbery, violence, injuries sustained, and other crimes is contained in the NIBRS data as well as the BCS data. The percentage involving an actual shooting reported in BCS is around 2 percent. Table 5.5 shows this percentage over the 1996-2000 period. BCS data displayed in Table 5.6 show that over this period, a firearm was present in about 32 percent of all bank robbery incidents. In almost all of those cases, 30 percent overall, that firearm was a handgun.

Table 5.7 presents NIBRS firearms data. Over the period 1996-2000, NIBRS reports firearms (including handguns) use in 49 percent of the 3,029 bank robbery incidents reported. Handguns were used in 38.5 percent of NIBRS incidents in which a firearm was used over the period.

It may be surprising that only between one-third and one-half of bank robbery incidents involve firearms. The perception one would tend to get from television or the movies is that a bank robber would never attempt a holdup without a firearm--and the more the better.

Table 5.8 holds another surprise. The incidence of violence and injury is very low. NIBRS data show that violence occurred in only 2.34 percent of incidents and BCS shows 4.84 percent over the time period. Given the low rates of violence, it should not be unexpected that the injury levels displayed in Table 5.8 are also quite low--5.58 percent for NIBRS data and 2.00 percent for BCS.

Regarding other crimes present in the incident, murder is very low at less than 1.0 percent in both databases, as are kidnapping and hostage-taking. Both NIBRS data and BCS data show that kidnapping/hostage-taking occurs in less than 2.0 percent of reported bank robberies.