Organized crime picks every pocket. Chicago officials estimate that, because of outright extortion by the Mafia or because of extra theft insurance and additional security forces necessary to combat its operations, the average United States citizen pays an additional two cents on every dollar he spends.

Employee dishonesty and shoplifting force businesses to hike prices to regain losses. You are paying for the dishonesty of others. Employee dishonesty in the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, costs taxpayers one billion marks (over $500,000,000, U.S.) annually.

The Hamburger Abendblatt, commenting on the German situation, said: “According to the latest crime statistics, the number of 14- to 18-year-old suspects arrested since 1975 has risen by 25.1%. In the children-under-14 category, the increase has been 30.8% . . . an end to this trend is not in sight. We must reckon with a further increase in the number of delinquent teenagers and children.”

Consider the Federal Republic of Germany. As one of the few countries in the world recently showing a decrease in population—between 1975 and 1977 its population dropped by over 600,000 persons—there should have been, to use this argument, a proportionate decrease in crime. However, government sources say that there were 2,919,390 crimes reported in 1975 and 3,287,642 in 1977, an increase of over 12 percent. This shows that crime is increasing even in places where the population is decreasing.

Very few crimes are discovered and reported by police officials themselves. A poll conducted by the German Max-Planck Institute revealed that up to 90 percent of police crime tabulations are based on reports made to them either by the victim of a crime or by witnesses.

A poll conducted by the German Max-Planck Institute revealed that up to 90 percent of police crime tabulations are based on reports made to them either by the victim of a crime or by witnesses. Keeping accurate records therefore is less dependent on the police than it is on the willingness and alertness of the public to report the crimes they see committed.

Is there anything to indicate that people are more accurate or conscientious in reporting crimes now than they were in the past? Not if the findings of this poll are to be believed: it discovered that only 46 percent of the crimes committed against those persons interviewed had been reported. More than half had gone unreported, either because the victim felt that his loss was too small to bother about, because he felt that the prospects of solving the crime were too minute, or because he had other personal reasons.

These figures, which compare favorably to similar findings in Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Australia and Finland, would indicate that crime is even worse than the statistics reveal. This is backed up by the German magazine Der Spiegel, which said: “In truth the number [of burglaries committed during the year] is ten or twelve times higher [than the number reported].”