The composition of petty theft under Art. 158.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is new for Russian criminal legislation, however, the five-year period of the Article made it possible to study the state and dynamics of the criminological characteristics of the personality of criminals committing these crimes (2017–2022). The purpose of the study was to identify the personality of individuals who commit petty theft that can be used to adjust the prevention of these crimes. The main methods of research were statistical and comparative methods: the study was based on statistical data sets of the Judicial Department of the Russian Federation on personality characteristics convicted according to various parameters. Comparison of the obtained results was carried out both with the previously obtained results of studies and data on other types of theft. As a result of the study, the authors came to the conclusion that in the characteristics of persons of this category there are similar and specific features that distinguish criminals who commit minor thefts from the personality characteristics of other persons who commit non-violent thefts. In particular, there is a peculiarity in changing the structure of these persons by gender, since the absolute indicators of women significantly increase with a decrease in their share in the structure of criminals convicted of petty theft; the age boundaries of these persons are shifted to the older group of 30–49 years; at the same time, the presence of almost half of such criminals of secondary vocational education is compensated by the lack of a constant source of income, which has a dominant influence on the formation of selfish motivation. The situational character of the investigated criminal behavior, the stability of selfish motivation realized in the commission of repetitions are noted. It is indicated that it is necessary to take into account the identified features when adjusting the prevention of minor theft.