An academic paper by Geoffrey Fain Williams looked at the life of a typical thief:

• People seem to engage in thievery for short periods – usually around a year.
• Reported earnings from stealing are low.
• Those who engage in risky behaviours such as smoking are more likely to engage in theft.
• Most thieves have stopped their dastardly heists by their late 20s – those that haven’t don’t earn a lot of money from it.
• It’s possible that there are professional thieves that are so uncommon they aren’t captured in the data, or don’t respond to such surveys.
• Or maybe the average thief is just a risk-taking adolescent who earns little more than they would from a part-time job.

The above summary is taken from the abstract. You can read the full paper here.

Source: Science Direct

Via: Marginal Revolution