Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogelbaum. Here, when you picture a burglar, who do you see? The black clad clip art guy with the tiny mask and a bulging bag of loot, or maybe the pair from the Home Alone movies casing a wealthy suburban neighborhood to know exactly when families are gone for Christmas vacation. The reality of burglary and burglars is very different than most of us think for starters.
According to FBI statistics, the majority of residential burglaries happened during the day, not at night under the cover of darkness, and according to interviews with convicted burglars, only a third of all break ins are planned ahead of time, rather than being professional thieves. The typical profile of a burglar is a seventeen year old kid who's looking to quickly grab something valuable and scram But we spoke with Marcus Filson, a professor of criminal justice at Texas State University and
a pioneering expert in the nature of criminal activities. He said burglaries are fast, typically over within five minutes and often within one minute. A lot of the time, the door isn't even locked. If they come in and rummage, they rummage quickly and get out of there. By better understanding when, why and how residential burglaries happen, homeowners can come up with the most effective strategies for deterring them, which brings us to the question of the day. Do
house or porch lights do anything to stop burglars? Pilson says that lights have their place in a home security strategy, but that lights alone won't prevent someone from breaking into your house. For example, motion activated exterior lights in the front and rear of your house are an effective way to spook a burglar, but only if the light is positioned correctly to illuminate the intruder's face so that a neighbor or camera might be able to see them clearly.
If it's pointed towards the neighbor's house, the burglar might realize that all the neighbor would be able to see as a blinding light and not the burglar. What about timed interior lights. Home automation systems have made it easier than ever to schedule and control your interior lights while you're away. They let you use your smartphone to program your living room, kitchen and bedroom lights to mimic what
it would look like if you were home again. While automated lighting might give the impression that someone is home, especially in the evening when lights can be seen from the street, thieves know to look out for other much clearer signs that you're gone during the day. According to interviews with convicted burglars in Australia and the United Kingdom, opportunistic thieves look for uncollected mail, newspapers and packages left
on the porch, and empty driveways and garages. An Oregon TV news team that surveyed convicted burglars found that all of their respondents would knock on the front door before breaking in, so those tricky interior lights might not help. And if you think you're being smart by leaving a TV or radio on in the house while you're away
on vacation, think again. Burglars in the Australian survey said that a TV blasting away in the middle of the night is a shore side mine that no one's home, which gets to Felson's biggest piece of advice for securing your home, get to know your neighbors. In that Australian study, just two eight percent of burglars were deterred by censor lights and nineteen point three percent by lights inside the house. But a burglar can be stopped if a neighbor picks
up the phone and calls the police. Of course, this means your neighbors need to know you and your family well enough to identify a true stranger trying to enter your house. Felson recommends introducing yourself to the neighbors on all sides of your house, particularly the ones that live behind you, since burglars will most likely enter from a back door or window, and to make it easier for your neighbors to see your house, you might trim back
your hedges from doors and windows. They can't report what they can't see. Recognizing that most burglaries happen between ten am and two pm, when a lot of people are away at work, your best neighborhood allies against a burglary are folks who are home most of the day, people who are retired, work from home, or work lay their shifts. Those same neighbors can pick up your mail and packages while you're gone on vacation, or even parked their car
in your driveway as a decoy. Again, exterior and interior lights can work as a part of an integrated home security strategy that should also include strong locks on all doors and windows and not leaving valuables in plain view. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.