Robbers like Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays...

Here's the short of it:
1. Avoid shopping malls where there is no access control for parking. That makes up 90% (?) of all malls in South Africa.
2. Avoid banks on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
3. Avoid ATMs on Tuesdays and Fridays.
4. Don't drive next to cash-in-transit vans on Mondays and Fridays.

That leaves Saturday, Wednesday and Sunday as the days least risky. You're good there - most of the time. Ah yes, the New! Improved! South Africa!™, what's not to like about it?

ATM bombings occur most often between 1am and 5am on Tuesdays and Fridays, while Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10am and noon or 2pm and 3pm are high-risk periods for bank robberies.

That's according to the Institute for Strategic Studies at the University of Pretoria (ISSUP).

The organisation has just released a paper titled "Armed robbery (bank robbery, ATM attacks and CIT (heists) as part of current violent crime in South Africa".

The paper was originally delivered by Alice Maree, senior manager of the violent crime office at the South African Banking Crime Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) during an ISSUP conference on security earlier in 2008.

Maree found that in 2008, cash-in-transit heists were most likely to occur on Monday and Friday mornings between 8am and 9am and were very rarely committed at night.

"Mondays are preferred as the perception among criminals that more money is available due to non-banking during weekends; and that employees are less alert after a weekend of wining and dining," Maree wrote.

"Pre-surveillance of a crime scene forms part of the planning before the crime."

"Banks identified as preferred targets were visited in a period that varies between a week and a day before the actual robbery."

She said that preferred ATM targets in 2008 were situated at smaller shopping centres where there is more than one machine.

Bank robberies always took place indoors, and since 2007 the preferred targets were "at smaller shopping centres with parking available close by, and with no access control to the parking area", Maree wrote.