Another session with the Evil HR Lady finds her engaged in some straight talk with a job seeker in sales who is well-connected but has two DUIs on his record.
Will my high level connections overcome a DUI?
I have a friend pretty high up at a major company (in sales) who had recently talked to me [...]

Speaking of crime and the recession, we found this press release issued last year by the National Retail Federation. It deals with store return policies and “return fraud.”

Though retailers seem to be confronting return fraud, incidents continue to permeate most retail stores. According to the survey, most retailers (88.9%) have had stolen merchandise returned to stores within the past year. Retailers also report being victimized by returns of merchandise originally purchased with fraudulent or stolen tender (74.1%) and returns using counterfeit receipts (45.7%).

The release goes on to address something called “wardrobing.”

The New York Times reported the other day that even in this brutal economy, crime is actually down in New York City.
“The idea that everyone has ingrained into them — that as the economy goes south, crime has to get worse — is wrong,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was never right to begin with.”

…While there is generally thought to be a lag between changing economic conditions and new crime patterns, he said, it is curious that there has been no pronounced jump in street crimes associated with the most recent recession, which took root last year.

A series of posts from the political science blog Monkey Cage addresses this counterintuitive lack of correlation between crime and the economy, in relation to people’s perceptions.

Ever see Woody Allen’s movie Take the Money and Run, in which his attempt at a bank robbery is thwarted because no one can read the hold-up note?

In real life,of course, crime and the desperation–economic or otherwise–that may impel someone to commit one is no laughing matter. Still, some of the details can be sort of interesting.

To that end: Bank Notes: A Collection of Bank Robbery Notes.