This book explores the little-known world of scrappers and metal thieves. Benjamin F. Stickle bases his study on field research collected while traversing communities with thieves and scrappers. Drawing on candid interviews, observations of criminals at work, and participation in the scrapping subculture, the volume describes the subculture of scrappers and identifies differences between scrappers and metal thieves. Through the offenders’ perspective, often quoting their candid responses, Stickle explores the motivations for metal theft as well as the techniques and methods for successfully committing theft. The book discusses how these methods and techniques are learned and identifies ways—often through the thieves’ own words—to prevent metal theft. Throughout the book, Stickle also challenges common assumptions about this community and identifies wider policy implications.

This paper estimates the elasticity of the supply of offenses with respect to the gains from crime. People steal copper and other nonferrous metals to sell them to a scrap yard. Simultaneously, the prices at scrap yards are set at the world market. We argue, that shocks in metal prices represent a quasi-experimental variation in gains from crime. This allows us to estimate behavioral parameters of supply of offenses and test the economic theory of criminal behavior. Our estimates suggest that the long-run elasticity of supply of metal thefts with respect to the re-sale value of stolen metal is between unity and 1.5. Moreover, the system tends to equilibriate quickly -- between 30 and 60 percent of a disequilibrium is corrected the following month and the monthly price elasticity estimates are between 0.9 and unity.

Metal theft : public hazard, law enforcement challenge : hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, July 22, 2009.