In fact, on the competitive theft market, the marginal thief gets a risk-adjusted remuneration only marginally higher than he would obtain in alternative (non criminal) employment.
The above conclusion was also arrived at by another type of economist, Meyer Lansky, who often said that "straight" type "crime" or legal business was more profitable and less hassle, or less cost, than the way he implied himself and his arch associate 'Lucky" Luciano had chosen.
When the government makes legal business of people more hassle than its worth, as in excess taxation, harassments of red tape or other impediments to satisfaction, then of course the marginal cost of substantial effort towards normal business, makes crime or other forms of anti-social rebellion more and more attractive.
It must be some kind of law that government makes legal business as unattractive as possible to justify the largest possible framework of government required to enforce the laws and structure necessary to deal with the crime they have defined. In other words the balance arrived at by governments is to achieve a maximum, not minimum conviction and incarceration rate. This is evinced by the refusal for western governments who have turned crime fighting into a big business with lawyers (themselves) and the civil service getting enormous profits from doing so. Without much crime this would be a meagre business. When it was pointed out that recidivism and jail time would be reduced by over 50% by the simple matter of education prisoners in Jail, the Ontario gov't refused saying it was mollycoddling criminals. The enormous savings to society of this crime reduction in all sectors of public, loss and tax payout was ignored. Why? BEcause it was not efficient government, if you view act of governance as the main objective. It would appear that lawyer/politicians view this necessary evil as more than a necessity.
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