Home Burglaries Statistics
Your home is your castle, if your sat at home at the moment just take a second to look around at everything you have within your home, from your computer to television, jewellery, watches even down to your DVD and CD collection, the amount it would cost to replace all of these items would be substantial and for those items which are personnel to yourself or items that are irreplaceable, these items are priceless.
However also take a look at your doors and windows and how you have taken measures to protect your home against intrusions. Ensuring your home is safe and secure should be your number one aim. In January of 2009 the national crime figures reported that house burglaries were up by 4% in many areas compared to previous years figures, this is a considerable increase and bucks the trend of falling crime rate which has been apparent for the precious 10 years. Increases have been seen all over the country, however more so in London, Leeds, Bristol and Manchester with Nottingham being the national hot-spot of house burglary (office of National Statistics).
Overall house burglaries have reduced by some 11%, with the people most susceptible to house burglaries being;
- Students
- Elderly
- Those moving home
- Those away on holiday
As you can imagine with a property being left empty or resided by a frail or elderly person, it makes life so much easier for any would be burglar to commit a crime.
The majority of burglaries, some 68% of cases were committed during the working week, being Monday to Friday. Of these 44% were committed during the day with 56% happening during the night. This demonstrates the importance of ensuring your home is safe and secure during the day whilst at work as well as late on a night. Furthermore it demonstrates the ease of which a daytime burglary can take place, if you saw someone carrying items out of a house during the day would you assume it was a burglary in progress? Probably not, you may put it down to a delivery, the occupier moving or simply disposing of some old items.
Burglars will enter your home through a range of methods, however the most common is to enter through the door with some 69% of crimes committed this way, entering a property through the window accounts for 28% with the remaining 3% from other means, which believe it or not include entering a property from the chimney. Opportunists will try door handles to see if they can gain access with little or no effort and 20% of entries were from homeowners who forgot or failed to lock their doors.
These are quite stark statistics, however are statistics which should not be forgotten. House burglaries are one of the most invasive forms of crime, knowing somebody has been in your home and have stolen your most treasured items is everyone's worst nightmare. Therefore taking the necessary precautions and protecting your home is essential.