Hello, today we’ll talk about the differences between the terms robbery, burglary, theft and larceny. All of these are takings, but they are distinguished by the means, the methods and the victims of these takings.
We will start with theft and larceny. These two words are synonymous and they refer to the simple taking of anything of value with an intent to permanently deprive the owner, that is an intent to keep whatever you've stolen. Common examples of theft and larceny are, for instance, shoplifting, taking something from a store. And there are several degrees of theft and larceny. Unlike in other crimes when we talk about first degree, second degree, third degree to explain the seriousness of the crime, usually when we talk about theft and larceny we talk about grand larceny or petty theft and the difference between a grand and a petty crime when it comes to theft and larceny is usually about five hundred American dollars depending on the jurisdiction. So, for instance, if you steal a few paperback books from a bookstore you will probably be charged with petty larceny. However, if you steal a car from an open public parking lot you will probably be charged with grand larceny, otherwise known as grand theft auto.
Now if we add another element to the taking crime, if we add the element of an unlawful entry, then you get a burglary, and unlawful entry is sometimes called breaking and entering or housebreaking, but it is also an element of a burglary and when you burgle, as you would do in British English, or burglarize a premises, it means you have entered that premises to take something or to otherwise commit another crime.
Now the last one on our list, robbery, which is often deemed to be the most serious, is a foreceable stealing from a person. This time we're adding a person. In the previous examples, we stole a car from an open parking lot, no people there. We stole books from a store, there might have been people around, but we didn't do the taking from a person. Now we are actually adding real or threatened physical force.