[Johnny555]

I'm surprised it's even that high, lock picks are pretty time consuming and it's hard to be inconspicuous while you're doing it.

Ahh, I looked at the linked article, and it's not just lockpicking, it's "picked lock or window", which presumably also includes things like using a knife blade to slide a window latch open.

Further in the article it mentions this:

If you were to separate lock picking from shimming latches, the percentage of lock picking incidents would very likely evaporate.

...

However, because we have no data to separate these two methods of bypassing — that is lock picking and shimming –, we will stick with the higher survey number of 4.1% for good measure.

But wait, that’s 4.1% of ONLY non-forced burglaries. What about ALL burglaries— forced and non-forced?

...

That’s only 1.36% of TOTAL burglaries that utilize either picking a lock or shimming.

[autoexec]

As a hobbyist lockpicker, I still keep running into the assumption that they're most often used for breaking into places. Good to have a source to show they aren't "mainly used for crime"

[ALittleLight]

Actually, I think that source shows crime doesn't mainly use lockpicking.

[Johnny555]

I think you're saying the same thing as the post you replied to:

"Good to have a source to show they aren't "mainly used for crime"

"I think that source shows crime doesn't mainly use lockpicking"

[ALittleLight]

Those aren't the same thing though.

Imagine:

1 million crimes, 1% use lock picks. 10,000 lock pick usages in crime.

18,180 total lock pick usages, of which 55%, or 10,000 are used in crimes.

In this scenario crime mostly doesn't use lock picks (99% of crimes didn't) but lock picks are still mainly used for crime (55% of lock pick usage is).

Of course I just made up these numbers as an example. It's just a logical point about what the article shows. I'm sure most lock pick usage is to get people into things they've been locked out of or hobbyists playing around.