PT152 · S4 · Q23 An antitheft device involving

This explains why a car thief is likely to get apprehended when they steal a car with this tracking device, but it doesn't help explain why a small % of cars having it could lead to a huge drop in car thefts. In particular, these cars were still stolen! The fact that the thief would get sloppy and get caught doesn't remove the car theft from the police record. We need an answer where some of these apprehensions are somehow deterring lots of future car thefts.

It doesn't matter how the cities we're talking about compare to other cities. The fact set we're trying to explain is about these cities NOW vs. these cities PREVIOUSLY. This answer is about "these cities PREVIOUSLY vs. other cities PREVIOUSLY)

This answer would allow us to say that even though only a small % of cars have the device, the % of car thefts that are apprehended has gone up dramatically. If you go from "5 car thefts were apprehended (rarely) to 25 car thefts were apprehended", that's a 400% increase. But the problem is we don't care about the rate of apprehension. We care about the rate of car thefts. This has nothing to do with that. Whether we apprehend the thief or not, the car theft has already occurred. We're looking for a causal story where a small group of people having these tracking devices leads to way fewer cars being stolen in the first place.

Are the out-of-towners people who have the tracking device? Do a higher percentage of them than the car owners of the city that they're visiting have the tracking device? If an out-of-towner does have the device, has their car stolen, and uses the tracking device to apprehend the thief, how does that lead to a dramatic drop in car thefts in that city they were visiting?