Homes Without Alarms 2.7 to 3.5 Times More Likely to be Burglarized

When it comes to alarm effectiveness, the security industry's mantra may very well be "show me the yard sign."

The Greenwich Study of Residential Security, funded by the Alarm Industry Research and Education Foundation (AIREF), and conducted by Drs. Simon Hakim, Gideon Fishman and Yochanan Shachmurove, finds that alarm systems are the single most effective measure to help reduce the probability of burglary. There's a catch, however: Alarm effectiveness is contingent up a customer's willingness to display their alarm company's yard sign. If burglars can't determine that a house has an alarm system while surveying it from a distance, the house becomes a target.

"This analysis shows that most homes that were burglarized did not have a yard sign," Dr. Hakim, a professor of economics at the School of Business and Management, Temple University, tells SIA Research Update. "Unfortunately, alarm customers in Canada do not use yard signs because they end up buried in the snow for much of the year."

"If you look at this data, it's obvious that having an alarm system works," Dr. Fishman, a criminologist at the University of Haifa, Israel, tells SIA Research Update. "In some locations, a security system's ability to reduce crime is lower because those particular homes are not attractive to burglars to begin with. When screening for opportunities, a burglar will go elsewhere if he sees an alarm company sign on a lawn. But once a burglar commits himself to particular home, it doesn't matter if he sees an alarm company sticker in a window. They pursue the home forcefully because they are usually motivated by a drug habit."

"If a day comes when every house has an alarm, burglars will have to choose their targets based on some other criteria," Dr. Fishman continues. "Until that time, houses with alarms are much less likely to be burglarized."

The Greenwich study finds that alarm systems are not the be-all-end-all in burglary prevention. By itself, an alarm system reduces the probability of burglary to about 30 percent of what it would be without any form of security protection. For optimal protection, customers must team their alarm systems with managerial measures (suspension of newspaper delivery and other measures to reduce the impression that nobody is home), deterrent measures (creating the illusion that somebody is in the house when nobody is present) and preventive measures (deadbolt locks, bars on windows). If all of these measures are used, the level of victimization falls to only 10 percent or less of what it would be without using any protective measures.

Expensive homes are more likely to be burglarized than inexpensive homes. Detached homes are more likely to be burglarized than non-detached homes. Close proximity (one-third of a mile or less) to a highway entrance/exit also increases a home's vulnerability to burglary. These variables make a staggering difference: An inexpensive, non-alarmed, attached home that's not near a highway entrance/exit has just a 7.6 percent chance of being burglarized during the next 2.5 years, but an expensive, non-alarmed detached home close to a highway entrance/exit has a 56.7 percent chance of being burglarized during the same time period according to this long-range study.

"We've done the statistical model, and the same patterns hold true every year," Hakim says. "Houses without alarms and lawn signs are 2.7 to 3.5 more likely to be targets. If we know how burglars choose their targets, we know how to protect against them."