Home Security Advice From Burglars Themselves: How Some Reformed Criminals Now Help Keep People’s Ho

A lot of advice towards protecting homes should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that so much of the time, it comes from people just recycling the same old facts that are not actually rooted in examining break-ins and the psychology behind them. Thankfully, there is a quickly growing segment of the home security population that bases its facts on the ultimate source: criminals themselves.

Or rather, reformed criminals: guys who used to make a living stealing from others and now channel this life experience into providing the ultimate advice towards effectively beefing up home security. This formula makes sense: in most other fields, experts are the people who have the most experience. If you want to know about flying a plane, you ask a pilot. If you’re interested in learning Spanish, you speak to someone for whom the language is a mother tongue. So it seems rather logical to go to burglars when it comes to finding new ways to keep homes safe and protected. And thankfully, much of the advice doesn’t involve shelling out excessive amounts of money for a home alarm system, but rather, is based on a balance between taking measures to protect your home and having some sort of technological advantage to help back those steps up.

One of the biggest critiques reformed robbers have of people’s approach to home security is assuming that criminals aren’t talented at their jobs. Basically, sometimes “common-sense” steps towards making a house safer actually just clue criminals into what it is you are trying to hide. For example, always turning on every single light in the house when leaving, in hopes that it makes it appear that people are home, just makes it obvious that no one is there. Likewise, putting out signs for home security systems that don’t exist doesn’t really work. Consider the ridiculousness of thinking that someone who robs houses for a living doesn’t already know the tells for an alarm regardless of a couple of stickers for a second, and that will make sense.

However, there are just as many tips that are important. For one, an occupied house is immediately less desirable, so if you can put interior and exterior lights on a timer and switch up the times they go on and off, that might make it appear as though there is actually activity in the house. And actually purchasing a home security system is a very helpful deterrent for a couple of reasons. One, robbers would prefer to break into houses without them, and two, you cannot actually tell whether or not it is the kind that notifies police immediately sometime or just the alarm kind. Most of the time, a robber would prefer to not stick around and find out, opting instead to leave immediately.

One of the most important things to remember is that if the house is obviously empty and there is no alarm, an efficient criminal is able to hit all of your hiding places in less time than it takes for neighbors to notice something is amiss and notify the authorities. Unless you have a safe in your home, it is very difficult to safeguard expensive and precious belongings, so the focus should always be on keeping intruders out of your home and having devices that will dissuade them from sticking around too long, like loud alarms that do notify the local police.