Responses to the Problem of Carjacking

Your analysis of your local problem should give you a better understanding of the factors contributing to it. Once you have analyzed your local problem and established a baseline for measuring effectiveness, you should consider possible responses to address the problem.

The following response strategies provide a foundation of ideas for addressing your particular problem. These strategies are drawn from a variety of research studies and police reports. Several of these strategies may apply to your community’s problem.

It is critical that you tailor responses to local circumstances, and that you can justify each response based on reliable analysis. In most cases, an effective strategy will involve implementing several different responses. Law-enforcement responses alone are seldom effective in reducing or solving the problem.

Do not limit yourself to considering what police can do: carefully consider whether others in your community share responsibility for the problem and can help police better respond to it. The responsibility of responding, in some cases, may need to be shifted toward those who have the capacity to implement more effective responses. For more detailed information on shifting and sharing responsibility, see Response Guide No. 3, Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety Problems.

For further information on managing the implementation of response strategies, see Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 7, Implementing Responses to Problems.

General Considerations for an Effective Response Strategy

Carjacking is opportunistic. Thus, the key is to prevent and reduce carjacking opportunities. There are five main methods of decreasing carjacking opportunities:[50]

• Increase the effort required to commit a carjacking
• Increase the risks of committing a carjacking
• Reduce the rewards of carjacking
• Reduce provocations that could precipitate or induce carjacking
• Remove excuses for carjacking 

Specific Responses to Carjacking

Offender-based Responses 

2.  Identifying and focusing attention on repeat criminal offenders. Identifying and focusing attention on prolific offenders is generally a sound strategy.[52], † Carjacking is among the crimes that prolific offenders are likely to commit, so reducing their overall offending will likely also reduce carjacking.

†  See Response Guide No. 11, Analyzing and Responding to Repeat Offending and No. 13, Focused Deterrence of High-Risk Offenders for further information.

Victim-based Responses

• turning off the vehicle ignition and removing the key from the ignition whenever they are not operating it
• not interacting with strangers while the vehicle motor is running
• using the center lane on a roadway to make it harder for carjackers to approach the vehicle
• keeping the doors locked and windows rolled up while driving
• leaving room to get around other cars when stopped in traffic
• not immediately getting out of the vehicle if it is bumped by another car[53]

‡ See Response Guide No. 5, Crime Prevention Publicity Campaigns for further information.

As is the case with all types of robberies and assaults, whether to resist a carjacking is a decision that must be left to each victim to decide based on the immediate circumstances.[54]

Consider working with vehicle insurance companies, vehicle rental companies, and motorist associations to help educate drivers about ways to reduce their risk of being carjacked.

Place-based Responses

Below are some possible specific measures that could reduce the risk of carjacking at particular locations:

• If there is a bus stop located on the near side of an intersection where carjackings commonly occur, consider moving the bus stop to the far side of the intersection, thereby reducing the opportunity for a carjacker to appear to be waiting for a bus at a location immediately adjacent to vehicles stopped at a traffic signal.
• Synchronize traffic signals to reduce the need for drivers to stop at multiple intersections along a major roadway, especially at nighttime.
• Program traffic signals to turn green for approaching vehicles at nighttime when traffic is light to reduce the chances of a driver having to stop at a signal with few other people nearby.
• Improve lighting in parking garages, convenience stores, and gas stations and install video surveillance cameras aimed at spots where stopped occupied vehicles and pedestrians are likely to be near one another.

Vehicle-based Responses

5.  Making vehicles less attractive targets for carjackers. Because carjackers tend to make quick decisions as to whether to try to rob a person of their vehicle, the less attractive the vehicle is to carjackers, the less likely they will attempt to carjack it. For example, for a variety of reasons, tourists are often attractive crime targets†. To the extent that an offender can tell that a driver is a tourist—such as by the fact that they are driving an obviously rented vehicle—their risk of being robbed of their vehicle increases. In the early 1990s, in response to a wave of carjackings, the State of Florida banned the use of special rental car license plates and rental car company logos to make those vehicles and their drivers less attractive crime targets. Tinting windows‡ or having multiple passengers in vehicles also makes them less attractive targets because carjackers are less certain that they can quickly control all resistance to the robbery.

† See Problem-Specific Guide No. 26, Crimes Against Tourists, for further information.

‡ The degree of window tinting is restricted by law in many jurisdictions as it can create special hazards for police officers.

6.  Educating vehicle owners about remotely disabling their carjacked vehicle. Some newer vehicles come equipped with anti-theft technology that enables the owner to remotely disable the vehicle after it has been stolen. This technology can also be installed on a vehicle after sale. Typically, the technology either prevents the vehicle from being started or, more relevant to carjacking, reduces the flow of fuel to the engine. For example, OnStar® from General Motors vehicles can send a signal to an OnStar®-equipped stolen vehicle, gradually slowing the vehicle, and it offers a Remote Ignition Block tool that makes it impossible to restart a stolen vehicle once turned off.

7.  Tracking carjacked vehicles. Vehicle location or other vehicle security technology can help identify and find a stolen vehicle. For example, OnStar® from General Motors vehicles can provide authorities with the GPS location. All major automakers now fit their new cars with tracking technology. One concern is that if the vehicle owner must make the tracking request, it can delay police finding the vehicle and reduces the chances of apprehending the carjackers driving it. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois routinely asks carjacked vehicle owners to give consent to police to track their vehicle’s location.

8.  Setting up 24-hour hotlines with vehicle manufacturers. Since most vehicles built after 2015 have some kind of tracking system that can be accessed by the manufacturer, setting up 24-hour hotlines with auto manufacturers allows the police, as well as vehicle owners/drivers, to locate carjacked vehicles and/or slowly stop or disable them.[56] If you identify a car make that is at high risk of being carjacked in your jurisdiction, you can set up 24 hotlines at least with that particular automaker.

9.  Installing facial recognition technology in vehicles. Although not yet in wide use, the technology exists to restrict starting or operating a vehicle if the facial recognition technology in a vehicle does not recognize the driver as being authorized.[57] Such technology could also video-record the carjacker’s face as the vehicle is being driven and either transmit the image immediately to the police or allow police to recover it later and use it to identify and apprehend the carjacker.

10.  Making vehicle key fobs hard to clone. Vehicle manufacturers should be encouraged to redesign their key fobs to make them more difficult to illegally clone. If carjackers cannot easily clone key fobs, presumably the stolen vehicles become harder to sell and the carjackers either have to take the time to either find the key fob in the vehicle or rob the driver of the fob—which takes more time, increasing the risk of being apprehended or identified—or accept a lesser price for the stolen vehicle.

Responses with Limited Effectiveness

11.  Arresting and prosecuting carjackers. Obviously, given the seriousness of the crime, police and prosecutors need to prioritize trying to apprehend, arrest, prosecute, and punish carjackers. However, carjacking is a particularly difficult crime to solve because it usually occurs so quickly and unexpectedly that victims have difficulty identifying the carjacker. Even if they recover the vehicle or stop someone driving it, proving who used the physical force to steal the vehicle depends heavily on the victim’s ability to positively identify that person. In Chicago, only about 11% of carjackings resulted in an arrest, a figure that is considerably lower than for other types of robbery.[58] Thorough forensic processing of recovered carjacked vehicles and gathering social media posts in which carjackers boast about their crimes can improve arrest and prosecution rates.