In the first instance, the break-and-enter will be one of nearly 2.9 million crimes that are reported to the police. Even though the victims may lose their belongings or have damage done to their place of business or dwelling, one out of three break-and-enters are never reported to the police. With these odds, the burglar plans his heist.

On average he can expect to cause about $2,200 in damage and property loss. He will certainly get far less for his loot when he fences it, but by way of comparison, Statistics Canada tells us that workers in the hospitality business, hotels, restaurants or bars, make an average wage of $240 a week for five days of hard work. Our burglar makes a few hundred dollars for a few minutes of "work." However, he does run a risk of getting caught and punished. How great is this risk?

If his crime is one of the two-thirds of all break-and-enters that victims report to the police, the probability of his getting caught and charged is about 12 percent. Actually the proportion of offences that are "cleared" is a little higher. There are some burglars who are caught but are too young to charge, and others who the police know have committed a break-and-enter but are charged with more serious offences so the charge is dropped. But all in all only about 17 percent of all break-and-enters are closed cases.

Once the burglar is caught and charged, he has to go to court. Although we have only limited data about the conviction rate of all property crimes at trial, he has about a 65 percent chance of being convicted.

Our convicted burglar is now faced with the consequences of his actions. For the single crime of break-and-enter our felon now faces jail in 61 percent of all convictions. If he gets lucky, he may draw probation, which is the outcome 35 percent of the time.

If he is sentenced to prison, on average his sentence will be 210 days. But of these 210 days, he is eligible for parole after one-third of his sentence, and except when denied for cause, must be paroled after two-thirds of his sentence. In the actual prison situation, about 20 percent are paroled at any one time.

So after all this, what risks does our burglar face? If he is good at arithmetic he may realize that the 210 days that is the average jail sentence upon conviction is a very unlikely outcome. In fact, if he does his math right, for those crimes that are reported to the police, he can expect to be sentenced to about 7.6 days in jail. So, as he pries open a back window of your house, he can expect to be sentenced to a whisker more than a week in the slammer.

But even this is an overestimate of the time he will serve. Since he has only a two out of three chance of being reported to the police, his anticipated time falls to 5 days. If he is put on parole in the usual way, then his actual time in jail drops to 4 days.

This is the expected cost the burglar sees on his way to your house for his 20 minutes of labour. His average take costs you a couple of thousand dollars. His expected loss is on the order of four days in jail at the taxpayer’s expense—not to mention legal aid fees and court costs all footed by the taxpayer to get him there. It is a wonder that only so few perpetrate so much on so many.