Carjacking is the crime of stealing a motor vehicle when the vehicle is occupied. Typically, the carjacker is armed, and the driver is forced out of the car at gunpoint. The word is a portmanteau of car and hijacking.

Discussion

The crime is extremely hazardous, threatening the physical safety of both the carjacker and the victim. To secure the car, the carjacker may sometimes shoot the victim or physically push the victim out of the driver's seat to force him or her out of the car.

Carjackings in the world

South Africa

Carjacking is a significant problem in South Africa, where it is called hijacking; there are some roadsigns warning people that certain areas are hot-spots. There were 16,000 carjackings in one year (18 times the American rate per capita), and 60 murders a year resulting from these. Some drivers in South Africa have gone to extreme measures, fitting anti-carjacking devices to their automobile, which shoot flames sideways from under the car, as well as avoiding stopping at red-lights in certain suburban areas.

Sweden

After being a problem in the United States some years earlier, carjackings became more common in Sweden, where it most appeared in places like Gothenburg and Stockholm around 2001-2002.

United Kingdom

English law has three levels of offense under the Theft Act 1968, each pertaining to the mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") and the degree of violence used. The least serious is TWOC, which covers any unauthorized taking of a "conveyance", s1 theft applies when the carjacker intends to permanently deprive the owner of property, and violent carjacking is an aggravated form of theft under §8 robbery. Amid increasing carjacking cases in the UK, there has been some discussion whether specific carjacking laws are necessary. The current view is that all aspects of the offense are covered in the law, whether as road traffic offenses, public order offenses, the use of weapons and firearms, etc., and there is no benefit in consolidating all the elements in one offense.

United States

In the United States, a law was passed in 1992 making carjacking a federal crime. This occurred amidst great media attention into the apparent spate of carjacking thefts, several of which resulted in homicide. One of these was the notorious September 1992 carjacking of Pam Basu in Savage, Maryland. Basu was carjacked at a stop sign in town; she soon became entangled in her seatbelt and then dragged to death. Libertarians and states' rights activists criticized this law, arguing that the control of crime is a matter for the states, not the federal government, and asserted that carjacking was made a federal crime only to make some incumbents appear tough on crime to gain votes.

The United States Department of Justice estimates that in about half of all carjacking attempts, the attacker succeeds in stealing the victim's car. It estimated that, between 1987 and 1992, about 35,000 carjacking attempts took place per year, and, between 1992 and 1996, about 49,000 attempts took place per year. Carjacking has become more frequent in recent years because sophisticated devices and computer systems have prevented and discouraged theft of unattended cars.

History

The first known carjacking took place on the open road in March 1912. The Bonnot Gang targeted a luxury Dion Bouton in the Senart forest between Paris and Lyon, France. The armed chauffeur and young secretary in the vehicle were killed.

Carjacking in popular culture

• Video games such as Grand Theft Auto, Driv3r and feature carjacking as part of the gameplay, which has attracted criticism from public figures.
• A truck hijacking scam was the subject of several episodes of the popular HBO series The Sopranos, and perpetrated by Brendan Filone and Christopher Moltisanti.
• The South African movie Tsotsi features a carjacking as the main plot element.
• Another South African movie called Hijack Stories also has carjacking as the main plot.
• Larry Niven's short story "The Deadlier Weapon" features a carjacking.
• On the animated series Family Guy, on the episode Road to Rupert, to get out of Aspen, Colorado Stewie and Brian carjack someone.
• In episodes 230 and 231 of the Case Closed (Detective Conan) anime and its corresponding manga files, a bus jacking occurs that involves the main characters and their calculated attempts to overthrow the hijacker and uncover their accomplice.
• In the Death Note anime and manga, a bus jacking becomes a crucial turning point in the plot.

See also

• Jack (mechanical)

External links

• U.S. DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics report on carjackings in the U.S., 1992-1996
• Do carjackers place fliers on the rear windows of automobiles? No. (from snopes.com)
• A Car jacking movie (fiction)