JOHN YANG: According to government and insurance industry data while reports of overall property crimes that's things like robbery, theft, and vandalism while they fell between 2019 and 2022 car thefts soared, surpassing a million in 2022 for the first time in 14 years, and then cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington DC, more and more car thefts are headline grabbing carjackings.

Alex Piquero is a criminology professor at the University of Miami.

He's also the former director of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Alex, why the big increase in car thefts.

ALEX PIQUERO, Criminology Professor, University of Miami: So thanks for having me, John.

So look, I mean, the pandemic is really when we started to see the upsurge in car thefts.

Some of that was attributed to the ease of which some Kia and Hyundai models were able to be broken into and stolen.

There were reports of YouTube videos and those kinds of things.

But you also had a lot of people, you know, having their cars out and about and a lot of people don't have them locked up.

And so what started to happen is because they were quick and easy not only to steal, they're also valuable for various kinds of parts, and they're easily these cars and parts of cars.

It's a very quick crime to occur and very, very lucrative.

So the chance of finding a stolen car or parts of cars are really, really hard and it's economically advancable for individuals who are stealing these kinds of vehicles.

JOHN YANG: And why carjacking?

So Philadelphia's reporting a record pace of carjacking.

Chicago last year, the highest in decades here in Washington, more than 400 last year, why are carjackings up?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, so there's a there's a double-edged sword of that we don't have really good national level data, John on carjackings, because individual police departments, some of them will code them as a separate carjacking category, others will code them other kinds of crime types.

But again, you know, vehicles are extremely profitable for offenders.

So you can you can easily steal them, you can easily put them on a on a ship, you can easily put them on 18 wheeler, and you can easily strip their parts down and sell them really, really quickly.

The thing with a lot of these offenses is that they occur at nighttime and they occur in dimly lit places.

So the ease of which that kind of crime type can occur is what I think has fueled the increases that we're seeing in certain cities around the United States.

JOHN YANG: Anecdotally, we're also seeing reports of cars taken in carjackings not ending up in chop shops being you know, chopped up for their parts, but being found later, being found out of gas or being found disabled.

Is that a change?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting what there's some anecdotal reports, John, that a lot of the carjacking events that occur, they're using other crime types.

And so they're stolen for ease of getting away with something else that the individual does, and then they just leave them on the side.

So there are reports of those as well.

And there's always going to be you know, part of the carjacking that we know we know as well is, you know kind of joyriding except it's done with a weapon.

And so, there's all kinds of different quote unquote types of carjackings.

And they're all I think, combining at least the motives and there and the reasons why they're being used in crime types.

They're kind of coalescing right now in many cities around the United States.

JOHN YANG: But there are also reports that a lot of these carjackings are being done by young people, teenagers and even preteens.

What do you make of that?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, you know, there are reports of that, John, I'm not sure I would hang my hat on that those reports come from a limited number of police departments.

But again, also what we see on media and social media, there is always an element of age, i.e., youthful offenders engaging in motor vehicle theft and carjacking.

So I'm not necessarily surprised in understanding or knowing that that's what we're seeing.

The preteen and earlier kids, that worries me a lot more, because that's a very early age to start getting into very serious kinds of personal crimes like carjacking.

So that's something we really need to watch closely in most cities in the US.

JOHN YANG: Are there things that law enforcement can do to combat this?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, I think there are things that law enforcement can do and things that law enforcement can't do.

So number one, they can't be everywhere.

Remember, police departments are stretched thin already.

There's homicide units, there are gang units, there are drug units.

And the crime of carjacking is something that it's hard to pinpoint in certain parts of town or this, that and the other.

So there's an element of cops not being able to be every single place.

But we do know that there's a lot of investigatory work that police agencies do, a lot of which you and I will never know about.

So they do have a lot of social network analysis.

Individuals involved in carjacking, John, are also likely involved in other kinds of crimes.

And so they're putting all this intelligence together.

But independent of law enforcement, things that people can do is they can make sure their cars are locked.

They can make sure that their cars are parked near lighted places, they can make sure that if they're out at night that they they're cognizant of their surroundings.

People around on them, cars around them.

So it really involves both people doing what all they can do and the police doing what they can do and a lot of what they're going to be doing is kind of investigatory behind the scenes work.

JOHN YANG: Alex Piquero of University of Miami, thank you very much.

ALEX PIQUERO: My pleasure.