An increase in the standards of home security has also had an effect in the burglary rate fall. Houses still contain desirable items for the thief but the skill and risk now required to get at them is often not worth the trouble. A thief would be much better off mugging somebody in the street for his or her iPod or mobile phone. This might help explain that while burglaries have fallen, muggings have been on the steady increase during the last decade.

The houses with decent security might be being targeted less by thieves, but the opportunist burglar is still on the look out for those that aren’t sufficiently protected. Even today, houses with simple security measures such as locks on windows and deadlocks on doors are ten times less likely to be burgled than those without any.

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