2003 Proceedings of the Midwest Business Economics Association 153 Desperation and

This study examines bank robberies across the fifty states and the District of Columbia for the decade of the 1990s. It was determined that bank robberies are positively associated with the ratio of police officers to population, and the unemployment rate. Bank robberies are also negatively associated with the poverty rates across states and over time. It was hypothesized that bank robberies were associated with the business cycle, and the police and poverty variables were included as control variable. There are serious policy implications because the evidence does not support the common belief that increased police forces are a deterrent to bank robbery, and that persons in poverty are not the cohort from which bank robbers emerge. The unemployment rate is significantly correlated with bank robberies and suggests that the expectations of economic hard times in the near term are perhaps the motivations for robbery as an economic activity.