The action of stealing from people's pockets; pickpocketing.
pocket-picking isn't always reported to the police
Example sentencesExamples
Apart from predictable pocket-picking on "the track", a free-admission area hosting thousands, no incidence of criminal activity was reported anywhere.
I live in Sydney, which had a massive increase in pocket-picking when we hosted the Olympics in 2000.
The number of thefts by pocket-picking has increased 50 per cent in Stockholm city during the first two months this year.
In a breakdown of the 1,441 thefts, the UCR says pocket-picking rose from a total of nine during the first four months of last year to a total of 20 from the first four months of this year.
Others insisted that in saloons and pool rooms, street youths were "instructed by New York Fagins in the arts of petty pilfering, of pocket-picking, sneak-thieving, circulating counterfeit coin," and other kinds of crime.