If your home is burglarized, will they come back?

Burglary isn’t necessarily something you think about until it happens and nothing can prepare you for the shock if it does. Fortunately, knowing the patterns of criminals can help prepare you and also prevent a burglary from happening.

Let’s assume your house has been burglarized once. A common assumption is that they got everything they came for. You may be a little more careful about locking your doors and windows and hiding whatever they missed but do you think they will come back?

A study done by Cambridge University found that yes, they will. Prior victimization is a good predictor of future risk and even more shocking is that repeat burglaries often occur shortly after the first incident. Repeat burglaries may happen to you or maybe to your neighbors. Targeting the same house or houses nearby maximizes a burglar’s benefit because he is already familiar with the home or area, which minimizes their search time. Often times burglars will come back within a few weeks once items had been replaced because it was easy the first time or they return for things they had seen before that they now had buyers for.

This is another prime example of why preventative security is so important. Although adding security measures to your home after the first event occurs will help keep you safe, keeping a burglar out the first time they try decreases your future risk of being targeted at all.