it depends on what you're doing (as far as I understand as a criminal news nerd)
the police-justice system is usually broke for commoners. So yeah, if you're not doing a serious offense, they will never catch you.
Where I live, you can buy weed. Even if the government says they're motivated to stop it, they don't have the resources to plant police everywhere.
If your home was 'visited' by burglars, they would just take fingerprints. They wear gloves, and that's enough to avoid the state actor.
if you're doing a real serious crime, you can kind-ish avoid attention, if you know retention laws and stuff.
if the (mostly digital) traces you generated are too old, they would have disappeared or would not be usable in court.
if you appeared on mall CCTV months before you did the crime, have been browsing sites over a year before, ... these data should technically have been deleted.- Just don't create new data in the meantime.
In a similar fashion, some white collar criminals host data in their lawyers office. it is so hard to have a warrant for a lawyers office that you can be safe.
A law teacher at our engineering college said it was convenient to hang out with a lawyer - just drop your phone in their purse if cops show up.
then, you can avoid some digital communications.
Putin and friends are well known for being mostly offline, unlike some ministers at western governments, for example.
Send letters, and you will have that perfect forward secrecy.
there has also been some stories about plausible deniability ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability ), especially among rogue corporations and corrupt politicians.
ie when you create data, you can do it in a way where it says what it says, but it's not meaningful in court.
don't drag attention on you.
cops shows teach you how so many criminals are found out after a traffic stop, when they were speeding or ran a red light.
The government can't check everyone, so they check those who stand out.
Lastly, I remember watching a youtuber who got out of prison, and who said that three people could only keep a secret if 2 are dead.
it's a bit pessimistic and dark, but maybe don't just involve everyone in your crimes.
I would like to know if series like Breaking Bad are (or were) realistic.
I know some criminals learned a lot from movies.
Edit : or just befriend politicians, you would be above any law in most places.
Someone in France once stole 2.5 billions $ in one shot from the government. It what became known as the uramin scandal, and nobody was caught. So everything is possible.