Householders have been urged to hide their valuables in unusual places after a scientific study revealed how experienced burglars choose predictable routes when raiding homes.
Research found that career crooks targeted high-value areas, such as bedrooms, studies and living rooms, were suspicious of unusual rooms and rarely entered bathrooms.
The University of Portsmouth ran the study on the methods used by burglars and non-burglars after seeing their actions first-hand during mock burglaries.
In the tests, all the experienced burglars entered houses by the back door, while the novices went through the front door. All the burglars navigated the house in a systematic way, with half heading straight for upstairs bedrooms and avoiding bathrooms before returning downstairs.
Claire Nee said the experiments were designed to shed light on the cognitive processes of offenders.
She added: “It sounds obvious that people who have been jailed for committing serial burglaries are experts at stealing, but we didn’t have any understanding of what exactly they do or don’t do which sets them apart from novices.
“We didn’t know how they think or the way they approach the job of stealing. We have interviewed many offenders before but this time we were able to observe them for the first time. The findings have important lessons for crime prevention and suggest that if you’ve got something valuable you really want to protect, you might be better off hiding small things among the toothpaste tubes.”
As part of the study, six serial offenders and six people with no criminal records were asked to take part in two tests.
One test involved burgling a house wearing a head-mounted camera and a motion capture suit. They were asked to touch anything they would steal.
In the second test, they carried out the same crime in a virtual house on a computer designed at the University of Sussex, clicking with the mouse on any item they would steal.
All were then asked to talk through the footage taken on the head-mounted camera, discussing their thinking and methods.