Not every­one is a hard­ened crim­i­nal.  Not every­one will turn to crime when the SHTF.  When peo­ple are des­per­ate, they do des­per­ate things when their back is against the wall.  Being a for­mer crim­i­nol­o­gy major (a LONG time ago) one of the things I like to do is take the time to watch the crime rates nation­al­ly, region­al­ly, and even local­ly.  I like to watch the trends, and make my own pre­dic­tions, etc.  I know, it’s kind of weird, but it is an inter­est of mine.

Now that you have a lit­tle back­ground on me, I’ve been watch­ing, and I’ve been think­ing.  To some of my friends, they think it’s a tox­ic com­bi­na­tion when I do that.  😉  That aside, crim­i­nal activ­i­ty has been ris­ing.  Not just vio­lent crimes, but all crime.  The trend is inter­est­ing.  I am going to spec­u­late that in the past three or so years the S has Hit The Fan for many.  Fur­ther, I spec­u­late that many peo­ple already have their back against the wall.  With high unem­ploy­ment, unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits that have run out, and for many no job on the imme­di­ate hori­zon, I would say that the SHTF for many.  I feel for these peo­ple, because I know that they would rather be work­ing and be pro­duc­tive.  It’s our human nature.

As stat­ed, crime is increas­ing.  It is increas­ing due to the eco­nom­ic state of our union.  The econ­o­my keeps rolling down hill, and in my opin­ion pick­ing up speed the fur­ther down the hill it is going.  Those affect­ed that have lost their jobs and that were lever­aged to the edge of their finan­cial abil­i­ty have already been hit.  As I stat­ed above, not every­one turns to crime, how­ev­er, of those that have, you can tell by the types of crimes that are being per­pe­trat­ed.  One exam­ple of this is when a home is not only bur­gled of the right­ful own­ers valu­ables, but when the dry­wall is torn down and cop­per wire and cop­per pip­ing is tak­en right out of the walls to be sold for cash.  There is an apart­ment build­ing close to my home.  Three apart­ments in the build­ing in the neigh­bor­hood.  The build­ing went into fore­clo­sure, and the bank took it back.  Appar­ent­ly some­one went in, and took out all the wiring and cop­per plumb­ing.  The place was destroyed.  The build­ing was an easy mark, because no one lived there at the time.  The scary part is, I live right around the cor­ner, lit­er­al­ly, and nev­er noticed any­one going in and out of the build­ing, nor did any­one report any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty.  When some­one even­tu­al­ly bought the build­ing, they basi­cal­ly gut­ted the place and had to start from scratch.

The inter­est­ing part of this to me is that there are peo­ple every­where in my neigh­bor­hood, all the time.  The whole crime was per­pe­trat­ed right under every­one’s nose.  This is way too local for me…  My point here, whether this was a pro­fes­sion­al job or not, is that this is not the only prop­er­ty or job site that has been bur­glar­ized, and bur­glar­ies are on the increase…

The issue as I see it, is what do you do when you come home from vaca­tion, week­end at the in-laws, busi­ness trip to find, not only all your stuff, but the elec­tric and plumb­ing miss­ing?  Regard­less of the insur­ance claim pay­ing for the repair, the dam­age is done, and the fix is more daunt­ing than you would expect it to be.  Frankly, it would suck.  Peri­od.

Crime, as we know it is chang­ing.  It is evolv­ing, or has evolved.  Where did it start?  Who knows.  The need for mon­ey, greed, need for food no the table.  Who knows.  One thing is for sure, as the econ­o­my set­tles into it’s 30 year low, crime will con­tin­ue to be on the rise.  As that hap­pens, and as our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to spend in the wrong areas like an out of con­trol ATM machine, gov­ern­ments at the local lev­el will grow weary of hav­ing to deal with the increased work loads.  There is only so much room in that jail for just so many crim­i­nals.  Our jus­tice sys­tem will have to com­pen­sate.  Short­er sen­tences, more plea bar­gains, more fines and few­er incar­cer­a­tions.  It is the way it will be.

I think.  Remem­ber that, I said “I think,” for 16 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, the Shit has already Hit The Fan.  It has.  We were only able to cre­ate 54,000 jobs last month.  It is a very sad state of affairs.  Those that are already against the wall and uber des­per­ate may even­tu­al­ly turn to crime to feed their fam­i­lies.  I hope this does not hap­pen, but I know that it will.  I think, that we have to start act­ing as if the Shit has already Hit The Fan.  The econ­o­my can­not be fixed.  It, unfor­tu­nate­ly, because of the debt our gov­ern­ment has recent­ly rung up, must be re-boot­ed from scratch in my opin­ion.  But for that to hap­pen, it would most cer­tain­ly Dev­as­tate the coun­try and every per­son in it first.

In the mean time, increase your secu­ri­ty and your sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness

We’ve got to start act­ing like ts has htf and pre­vent those crim­i­nal acts from hap­pen­ing in the first place with increased secu­ri­ty and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness.