zenith likes to put a cap on crime success, even if its a low cap... so even if you're level 100, you cant get a better overall crime success rate than someone level 30.  makes sense to me 

 
Its called the law of averages theory and it applies here.
You should know that poptart.  You're edumacated
Also, I have just cracked the top 50 in the pantheon for crimes.  
now standing at a whopping 46 on this list, my success rate is 82.7% overall
Perhaps you could get some other players who are higher on this list to post what their overall rate is.  This could give you a high and low for the top 50 at least and give everyone comparison on where they stand on their own success rate.
 
I've had days I was put in the Slammer well over 10  times. (But not in a long time.) LOL
I ended up in Jail for too 532 minutes too. 
I'm sure that isn't a record from a crime.
 
Crime Statistics	Amount	Rate
Crime Successes	22,681	83.5%
Crime Failures	4,476	16.5%
Crime Busts	695	2.6%
Total Crime Jail Minutes	127,066	4.7 min per attempt
 
So between 46 and 19 (JohnnyB) we have a 0.80% difference in sucess rate
So the # 1 player is maybe somewhere around 85-86% max (and thats giving a lot of room).
 
doing some really hard crimes i see -.-
 
 (2009.Dec.17 01:09 PM)abysmalpoptart Wrote: [ -> ]doing some really hard crimes i see -.-
You wanna compare notes you corksucker?
 
Crime Statistics	Amount	Rate
Crime Successes	11,304	83.4%
Crime Failures	2,254	16.6%
Crime Busts	270	2.0%
Total Crime Jail Minutes	36,830	2.7 min per attempt
im 22 on the overall list and ten to stay with the car crimes i have the best success with them