USDOJ COPS Bank Robbery

The United States experienced a dramatic increase in bank robberies between 1965 and 1975, when the number of crimes quadrupled from 847 to 3,517. Despite the enactment of the federal Bank Protection Act in 1968, robberies continued to rise through the early 1990s and now average around 8,800 per year (see Figure 1).§ Other countries have faced similar fluctuations in the number of bank robberies. For the most part, the incidence of bank robbery is closely related to other crime trends, especially commercial robbery. In the United States, banks have comprised an increasing proportion of the nation’s commercial robberies: in 1989, 6 percent of commercial robberies were of banks; this proportion increased steadily to 9 percent in 2004. (See Figure 2.)§§ Although bank robberies track crime trends, they vary by the size of the jurisdiction. In recent years, bank robberies in smaller U.S. cities have comprised an increasing share of commercial robberies: nearly 12 percent of commercial robberies in smaller cities are...