Section V: special reports

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

[FIGURE 5.6 OMITTED]

An examination of only male offenders shows these two age groups account for more then 45 percent of all male bank robbery offenders. Figure 5.6 shows a clear pulse in the late teens and early twenties that damps down in every subsequent age group.

Females show the same general pattern except that the numbers of female bank robbery offenders is much smaller than that of males.

Age, race, and sex are combined and presented in Table 5.11. The same patterns are visible in this table as shown earlier and separately. There are more males than females in every age group. There are more black males than white males in younger age groups and more white males than black in older (>35) age groups. There are more white females than black females. The number of Asian/Pacific Islanders and American Indians/Alaskan Natives are presented but are too small to analyze.

Prior bank robbery convictions

In Crime Indicators System, Fourth Semiannual Briefing on Crime (1983), Akiyama discussed the bank robber classifications of "professional" and "amateur." His discussion was based on a previous FBI report from 1977 that divided bank robbers into these categories. A "professional" in this classification scheme is a bank robber with a prior criminal record, despite his or her lack of success as evidenced by his/her incarceration. This professional is a bank robbery specialist. The "amateur" bank robber is a bank robber with no prior record. The amateur is presented as acting almost on a whim. The bank robbery to the amateur is almost a spur-of-the-moment undertaking with the robber engaging in very little planning. This individual robs banks to get the means to fulfill some more fundamental need, such as the need for drugs. Table 5.12 displays BCS data concerning the number and percent of subjects taken into custody for bank robbery who already have a conviction for bank robbery, bank burglary, bank larceny, or bank extortion. From 1996-2000, the average percent of "professional" bank robbers is 20 percent. This was more than the average in the earlier period from 1978-1982. Over that time period the average percent of "professional" bank robbers was 14 percent. This is still a clear indication that the great majority of bank robbers are amateurs and have not been convicted of a bank crime in the past.

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study. Although Summary data have been collected by the FBI since 1930 and cover virtually the entire population of the United States, their comprehensiveness concerning bank robbery is limited. The only information available is the number of bank robberies, the percent of total robberies that that number represents, region of occurrence, bank robberies by population group, month of occurrence, and the amount of money taken in the aggregate. It is not possible to disaggregate Summary data to the individual incident.

Some bank robberies may not be captured in the database because of the Hierarchy Rule that limits reporting of only that crime in the incident that is highest in the "hierarchy" of Part I crimes as defined by the UCR Program. Both murder and rape are higher on this ordering of crimes than robbery. Therefore, if a bank robbery included a murder, the only crime entered into the Summary database is the murder. This would also be the case for a rape occurring within the bank robbery incident. Only the rape would be recorded and the bank robbery would be lost information.