Why So Much Cell Phone Theft?

Taken from predominantly children and young adults.

How can a criminal do that, why don't they take from people that can somewhat defend themselves or at least more mature people that use the phones more discreetly. _{said sarcasticaly}

More like children stealing from children. Something their own parents don't wish them to have or can't afford. Sounds like the victims need to learn more responsibility in not leaving them laying around. I don't think the majority of the cases the victims were assaulted over them. Then when something is given to you. I think the saying is easy come easy go.

You see them so engrossed in their texting, they have no idea what their surroundings are.

I don't believe the children learned an important lesson, with the thieves teaching them a lesson, but instead, they feel victimized and blame others.

Wait till they start driving.

to sell and buy drugs

do u knw any technological innovation to solve this problem.. if u knw na, share with me pls..

In South Africa, stolen cell phones get blacklisted, and none of the local 4 carriers will recognise it afterwards (we use GSM technology). The SIM card becomes unusable, as well as the phone itself (they block the IMEI number on their systems). You can also put a security code on certain makes of cell phone, that requires a code when SIM cards are changed, which is what I did. Problems?

1. Blacklisting only works in the country of origin -so I would suspect that many stolen phones find their way out of the country.
2. The security code can be bypassed, as I found out when my SIM card had to be changed after a few years & I couldn't remember it. Calls to the helpline revealed that my beloved Nokia with Afrikaans predictive text is effectively permanently blocked - despair!! Until I went to my friendly jack-of-all-trades chappie at the local taxi rank, who coupled it up to a PC and rectified it for me! I now understand that this is making life much easier for the criminal element.
3. I suspect that GPS enabled devices could have tracking, but that will only catch really stupid criminals - they know what they are doing.
4. In the older days phones were stolen for spares, esp. batteries, but I'm not sure if that is still the case.
   

I don't understand why people bother stealing phones in the UK because there is a Europe-wide blacklist. If your phone is stolen, you report it and the IMEI number is added to the list basically bricking the phone anywhere in Europe. Obviously, the criminals could be selling the stolen phones into markets outside Europe, or using them for parts.

Strangely, carriers in the US refuse to take this simple step and thus enable rampant theft and use of stolen phones.

So that's a possible 2x10⁶ telephones a year cast onto the UK's secondhand telephone market. How can this be viable alongside the provision of new ones? In the town of Chelmsford, for example, there are three new telephone shops in the space of four adjacent high street retail premises and another two nearby on the other side of the street!

Nope. No local market. They must be going overseas.