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Article: Crime waves; Mobile phones and crime.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- October 27, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Mobile phones are bad for crime figures
AS MANY a jealous lover has discovered, mobile phones are a useful tool for adulterers. But they also have attractions for more serious offenders. Mobile phones are changing the ecology of crime, to the alarm of police and politicians.
The most obvious criminal implication of mobile phones is that an awful lot of them get stolen. Figures released last week by the Metropolitan Police revealed that there was a 31.4% increase in street robberies and snatch thefts in the first six months of this year (see chart overleaf). Half of all those offences involved a mobile phone, and in two-thirds of those, the phone was the ...