I'm trying to think of another piece of property that's treated like bikes when it comes to theft. I understand the thief's point of view - they're readily available, easily and quickly resold, valuable enough to justify stealing, but not generally valuable enough to get law enforcement or even most owners too outraged. I think the general population, and most law enforcement, see bikes as kind of a frivolous thing, that kids ride, or that are cheap exercise equipment that most people buy and don't use. How many people have a bike or three in their garage or basement, that they haven't ridden in years, and wouldn't miss if they disappeared? If my car or jewelry or watch are stolen, people can relate, they can see themselves as a victim, and they want to stop it. But another bike goes missing? Shoulders shrug.
Also bikes are a pain to easily secure, especially since they're meant (for many people) to be convenient ways to get around quickly, and hauling 5 pounds of locks and cables around, and using them properly, is a PITA. And it's rare that the thief needs to commit breaking and entering, or even trespassing -- just cruise the right public spots, and pick off the low-hanging fruit. Plus the bike is it's own get-away mechanism. It's a lot easier to ride away, indistinguishable from a legit owner, compared to hauling a big screen TV our a window and down the street.
When I was a kid in lower-middle class neighborhoods, bike theft was a constant problem. Often it was a 'tough kid' who was known to steal the bike, and he often got away with it just because no one wanted to create a neighborhood conflict. It's not a new problem. Another issue, as it relates to this thread, is the campus environment. I always felt safe on campus, as I think most kids do, but the reality is that there's a fair amount of crime there, especially sexual assaults, and I think there's a bit of an unspoken conspiracy amount higher ed types to de-emphasize that. Plus most college kids live in tiny spaces, where there's no room to keep a bike inside) I don't think it's a change in morals, I think bikes have been stolen from the early days of their production, and I think college campuses have been places of low-level crime tolerance pretty much forever. Look at how the outrage over frat house hazing incidents is a recurrent issue, and yet somehow it never changes. You have underage drinking, fairly rampant drug use, cheating on coursework, and all manner of other illegal/immoral 'rites of passage' that going on regularly. And there's even something of a resentment of seemingly 'rich kids' among many students, so stealing someone's nice bike is just giving them what they deserve, since mommy and daddy probably bought that bike for them (to paraphrase the attitude I heard from a few fellow students BITD). And, frankly, a lot of co
I'm not trying to justify bike theft, on or off campus, just look at the bigger picture, and why it's not as big a deal to most people as it is to us.