Burglary (Non)prevention: An Instance of Relinquishing Control

Abstract

Two field experiments were conducted to assess the attributions people make for burglary and burglary prevention, and the degree to which these attributions relate to overt crime prevention measures. It was found that an overwhelming majority of our subjects believed that burglary prevention was the responsibility of others and as such, they did not take overt precautionary measures themselves. To our surprise, there were no differences on these measures between burglarized and nonburglarized subjects.