As the latest statistics reveal, ticket crime is up 200 percent from this time last year. Bloody warehouse robberies, Ticketmaster shootouts and dramatic kidnappings have dramatically altered the face of what was once referred to by Wall Street as the “sweet science.” However, both law enforcement and concert promoters differ, not only on how to reduce ticket crime, but what steps need to be taken to prevent today’s youth from turning to a career where life itself is often considered cheaper than a nosebleed seat for The Rolling Stones.

“Every hour of every day, someone, somewhere is committing a ticket crime,” says noted concert criminologist, NYPD Inspector Richard Tracy, whose book, Green Day Afternoon, described the notorious 2002 New York incident where one person took 200 people hostage during a botched attempt to steal over 10,000 tickets for one of America’s favorite bands. “For them, tickets for shows by Paul McCartney or U2 represent a better life. And Heaven help those who get in their way.”

But just as controversial as the spike in ticket crime incidents, is the debate as to how one becomes a ticket criminal in the first place, with the law enforcement community evenly split between those who believe that people who steal tickets for shows by artists such as Ted Nugent, Graham Parker and Jon Dee Graham are products of their environment, while the other half maintain that ticket crooks are dangerous psychopaths acting out fantasies of power and control each time they steal a ticket for Hank Williams Jr. or Jack Johnson.

“Ah, yes. The old nurture vs. nature argument,” says Tracy. On one side you have people pushing the theory that a ticket thief is the result of a deprived childhood where parents routinely denied their children the simple pleasures of life, like a front row seat for Neil Diamond or backstage passes for The Allman Brothers Band. Others claim that ticket criminals are merely acting on impulses from the darker recesses of the mind, much like radio talk show hosts or TV programming executives.”

But what’s more controversial than the perceived roots of ticket crime is what to do with those convicted of such felonies. Already, 41 states have passed laws calling for the death penalty for convicted ticket criminals, while the nine remaining states have statutes on the books that call for harsher punishments for stealing tickets for shows by bands and artists such as Def Leppard and Neil Diamond, including public mutilations and floggings as well as performing community service, such as working as Axl Rose’s personal assistant.

“Those bleeding hearts want us to think that a quick trip to the gas chamber or guillotining someone at the public square is cruel and unusual punishment for someone convicted of a ticket crime,” says Tracy. “However, down at the Concert Science Investigation (CS) labs, we have a saying – that this week’s conservatives are last week’s liberals who had their tickets for Bob Dylan and UB40 stolen from them yesterday. Once you’re a victim of ticket crime, you want justice. You want society to do to the thief what the thief did to you. In spades.”

Coming up later this week: Should concert attendance be made mandatory by law? Stay tuned.