While overall bank robberies are decreasing, California, Illinois, and Colorado consistently see high numbers, with California leading in total incidents and Colorado often leading per capita due to easy highway access and organized crime, though broader robbery stats show locations like residences and streets far exceed banks, with metropolitan areas in California also high in overall robbery rates.
About a third of robberies occur on the street or highway. Approximately 20 percent take place at commercial establishments like gas stations and convenience stores. Around 17 percent occur inside residences. By comparison, the majority of burglaries (over 60 percent) take place at residences.
Trends in Bank Robbery
Bank robberies are relatively uncommon: only about 2 of every 100 robberies are of a bank.
A bank robbery would result in a loss for the bank, but it's unlikely there would be a financial loss for the bank's customers. Banks take steps to make sure your money is shielded before an event like a robbery occurs. What's more, financial institutions do their best to stay one step ahead of would-be thieves.
1) Library or a Study Room. Home library or office room with bookshelves. This is an excellent spot to stash your valuables, especially if you have lots of books. It becomes a tedious task for thieves to search between the books, especially when they only have a short amount of time to pull off the theft.
Racial Disparities in Victimization Widened: Black Americans were more likely to be victims of violent crime than other racial groups in 2023. For instance, Black Americans were more than twice as likely to be robbed as White Americans.
Factual errors. While LA has had the title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World," given in 1963 and it does have a history of infamous bank heists, it does not have a "robbery occur every 48 minutes" as it says in the opening title.
Overall, the chances of being a victim of burglary range from 1 in 14 to 1 in 943 across the top 50 cities in the country, which is quite a significant range!
Few criminals are able to make a successful living out of bank robbery over the long run. Bank robberies are still fairly common and are indeed successful, although eventually many bank robbers are found and arrested.
The estimated robbery rate of 81.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 showed a decrease of 5.2 percent when compared with the 2018 rate. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)
Why Invest in Burglar Deterrents?
Hiding Places to Avoid:
Think about it: burglars and trespassers prefer darkness. A dark property provides them with plenty of places to hide and sneak around unnoticed. A well-lit home, on the other hand, makes it significantly harder for them to move around without being seen.
It's generally not fully safe to keep $500,000 in one bank account because the standard FDIC insurance limit is $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category, meaning $250,000 is at risk if the bank fails. To fully protect the entire $500,000, you need to structure it across different ownership categories (like single, joint, trust accounts) or use multiple banks to spread the funds, leveraging separate $250,000 coverage for each.
Under federal law, bank robbery is a serious offense and you could be sentenced for up to 20 years in a federal prison, a fine up to $250,000, or both. If you used violence to accomplish the bank robbery, you could face more severe penalties.