The quiet revolution that made your home, car, and wallet a lot safer |
A few weeks back, in the run-up to Christmas, my family was doing what it always does during the holiday season: watching Home Alone. And, around the time that Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s Wet Bandits began plotting their break-ins, I began wondering something: Were home robberies really so common in 1990, when the film was released, that audiences wouldn’t blink at the idea of a comedy based around home burglary?
In 1990, in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka where the film is set, there were 53 burglaries, the vast majority of which were in residences like the McAllisters’ house in the movie. That adds up to a rate of 435 robberies per 100,000 people, which was actually fairly low for the time. But in nearby Chicago, there were more than 50,000 burglaries, or around 1,800 per 100,000 people, that year. The nationwide burglary rate was over 1,200 per 100,000 people — part of an overall property crime rate that was near the highest the US had ever recorded.
So, yes, the idea that a couple of bandits might break into your home while you were off on a Paris vacation wasn’t far-fetched. (Although given that the McAllister family were so disorganized they twice lost one of their kids on Christmas vacation trips, I’m not all that confident about their home security approach.)
But when Home Alone is remade — as I’m certain a remake-obsessed Hollywood will do eventually — they might need to change up the premise. Nationwide, burglary rates have fallen by more than 80 percent since 1990. Chicago has seen rates fall by similar levels, a story that is all the more remarkable given just how high those rates were in the 1990s. Wealthy Winnetka had less far to drop, but it’s still down by over 60 percent.
While the historic drop in violent crime in the United States has gotten a lot of attention recently, including in this newsletter, the dip in property crimes like robbery, burglary, and motor vehicle theft has gone under the radar. The overall property crime rate has fallen by 66 percent in the US since 1990, even steeper than the decline in violent crime, and the lowest level since national data began in 1976. And while this has largely been a steady, long-term trend, there was a 9 percent decline between 2023 and 2024 — the sharpest single-year decline on record.
For our stuff, as well as for our lives, there’s an argument to be made that Americans are safer now than they have ever been.
The bad old........