One of the most obvious is the deception of criminals. They hide their intent and weapons before the crime and they hide their sin and sources of their income after the crime. If these are "white collar" criminals, they hide their bad deeds continuously. Pickpockets are classical deceivers. Criminals see deception as a natural part of their profession. Their loyalty is often to self and sometimes to a few others. Since humans, in general, have very fragmented minds, criminals may have a part of their personality as nice people. It is fear, anger, destitution and fragmentation that allows them to combine the crime with niceness. Also, the majority of humans rarely think of humanity as a whole. They divide the world into "us" and "them", where "us" is a person, a family, a group, a class, a country, or a religious group. The criminals are not different, in their own eyes, they are good and they take advantage of "others" which are from their prospective bad, stupid and weak. So, in their eyes, they are rarely criminal, they are actually good and victimized people fighting for justice or simply working towards their survival.
Here is a bit of my personal experience on a part of criminal deception. I come from the Soviet Union. I lived there for my first 33 years. This was a decaying empire, largely of Orion type. There was a rotten hierarchy. Ideology was all rotten and people largely didn't believe in it. Crime against individuals was common but was commonly considered a sin. Crime against the empire was common, but since the empire was perceivably evil, this kind of crime was not considered a sin by many people. Moreover, stealing and deception were norms of life. I lived in the capital. Normal life in the capital involved stealing, deception, bribery, and many other forms of criminal activity. Some of that was present worldwide, but in the Soviet Union, the crime and deception were more pronounced and accepted. Even most of the popular movies of the time were about professional and amateur criminals.
Now, Russian life and movies continue this trend, but the situation is radically different. Now the criminals are harming individual people, not the rotten empire. In the Soviet Union, the crime was more a form of survival and was justified in many ways. Now the crime is simply a crime with no justification.
Is there an improvement in the last 60 years in Russia? Certainly, yes; in the old times, almost everyone, I would estimate over 95% of the Soviet people were involved in crime. It was the norm of life. The restrictions were so harsh and so irrational, that it was possible to live only by bending and breaking the law. Life was a school of common sense. Logical people following the rules had trouble surviving in the system. Nowadays, it is possible to live in Russia without participating in the crime. I estimate that people taking part in crime account only under 30%. This is a huge improvement. Even federal crime in Russia became much softer. Fewer innocent people are killed and fewer dissidents are imprisoned. The laws and practices became much more liberal and make now a bit more sense.
Therefore, from my own experience, I can justify, that there is a substantial improvement in morale and a decrease in crime in the Soviet Union. This pattern is likely true for humanity in general.
During the last 17 years, I traveled between America and Russia almost every year and met the nastiest people - the passport control officers at the border. This is a special cast of people who always have been privileged and inhumane in Russia. These people were part of the KGB (the secret police), the most criminal part of the Russian government, which largely controlled it and was responsible for the worst government crimes. These people have the training, culture and behavior of professional killers, which is predators. In the past, every time passing through passport control, I experienced their threatening attitude. On the border, they wouldn't kill, but they were notorious for giving innocent people much trouble, sometimes for pleasure and often for profit.
The last time I traveled, I was pleasantly surprised by the change in personality in border control workers. These were young men and women, who laughed and behaved in a friendly non-threatening manner. I realized that these young people were born and grew up after the fall of the Soviet empire and bore no trace of the past. I had a similar experience recently in the Russian embassy where people did their job without inflicting unnecessary trouble on my family. It still took me much extra trouble and hard work to fix the formalities needed for the travel, but the treatment was radically more rational and humane, so overall improvement in dynamics is obvious.
Similar improvements I observe in America. It certainly is much more civilized than Russia. The level of crime is much lower here than in Russia. For the last 20 years, it is a norm not to participate in any crime at all. The only crime Americans are allowing self is speeding and this is also relatively reasonably practiced. Generally, even speeding drivers are polite to each other and conscientious. I had never given a bribe in America. This sounds like a "duh" to Americans, but for Russians, it is almost unbelievable. A few days ago, I did a tiny crime. A phone which if ordered from China broke and I was to mail it back to have a large part of my payment returned ($160). I discovered that somehow, sending phone batteries by mail is prohibited. This didn't make any sense since I often sent and received phones with batteries by mail and the phone that broke came to me by mail. So I faced the need to lie clumsily to a post worker pretending that I am returning a phone without a battery, which didn't make any sense. A nice worker at the post office kindly accepted the lie and my parcel, effectively saving me the effort and the money. I send my thanks to her. This is an example of a minor crime that is justified from the point of view of a minor criminal. From my point of view, it was not my fault that the phone broke. I needed the money, which was a substantial sum for me. I needed it for important things relevant to survival. I found that the rules were somewhat irrational and that it is possible to use deception to violate the rules, especially because I knew they were violated by many before me. I knew that phones are sent all the time by mail, and it seemed unfair to me that I have to lose my money because of the rules which are not followed by others. I bet similar logic stands behind a large proportion of crime. People feel that they are not the first ones to violate the law, that they are doing this for survival and that if they take advantage of the situation, it will be fair (in their system of beliefs).
Naturally, most of the crime is done because of poverty and with a feeling of self-preservation and victimization.