This is a difference that explains why car thieves today are more likely to be caught than car thieves five years ago. Instead of abandoning stolen cars quickly, thieves now keep stolen cars for longer, making it easier to catch them.

This does not contribute to an explanation for why car thieves are more likely to be caught today. Even though there are more car alarms, people generally ignore triggered car alarms, so they are not causing car thieves to be caught.

If police are prioritizing the investigation of home burglaries over the last five years, there are fewer resources to investigate car theft. So we can’t conclude that car thieves are more likely to be caught today based on this explanation.

This does not contribute to an explanation for why car thieves are more likely to be caught today. If anything, the dispersal of stolen car parts might make it less likely for car thieves to be caught. We need a reason why it is more likely.

The fact that there are more adolescent car thieves now doesn’t explain why car thieves are more likely to be convicted now. Also, whether a car thief receives a lenient sentence doesn’t provide information about the number of convictions or the reasons behind them.