Deterrence Theory: Breaking And Entering Into A Home

One of the more serious crimes is when a person is breaking and entering into a home. Not only can it lead to more crimes, but it will have an effect on the family and neighborhood for years to come. It will always be in the back of a homeowner’s mind that they are in fact not safe in the neighborhood. Which will cause paranoia, in the one place everyone should always feel safe. There must be a way to stop these crimes which is why I have theorized that the criminals in fact use Deterrence Theory in the process to figure out which house to break and enter into. Neighborhoods that have little to no deterrences within their community are more likely to be broken into. If a house with deterrences are present the criminal is more likely
Even without the correct rational, a criminal will not get caught because obviously, they enjoy what they do, but without an opportunity the criminal cannot commit the crime. The important concept to strive for is to try and find the factors. That can define what exactly can be done to stop these criminals from entering these houses. Along with what other variables can have effects. For this research, our dependent variable would be broken into homes and the independent variable would be deterrences. Prevention strategies are essentially deterrences such as cameras, having dogs, busy street, lights, proximity to a police station or even neighborhood watches. There are tons of variables that can make a criminal want to stop before they start. Deterrence Theory says that the criminal weighs out all the options to find the best place to commit the crime. These deterrence’s are all effective ways that would make the criminal think twice. To check to see how well this works we would need to look at files from the last decade and ongoing cases that involve home break ins and see if they had any of the deterrence’s listed above. If they do have those deterrence’s then it shows that the theory did not hold true for the scenario. If they end up not having any deterrence’s then that means their house was decided upon the criminals because they knew they could get away with