Is blaming constructive?

Every time I leave or enter my house, I instantly lock the door.

It is habit, an action I do without thinking. But in the light of recent burglaries in the area, the connotations of an action so instinctive to some, and yet so unimportant to others, can no longer be ignored.

So far this term there has already been a spate of burglaries to student houses, many of them during the night while the tenants were asleep. This is a worrying trend, guaranteed to create an atmosphere of fear amongst all of us; after all, the idea of someone entering your house while you are asleep is a distressing one.

Nevertheless, there is one critical fact to these incidents that must be noted: these houses had been left unlocked.

Some would call this foolish, others simply careless, and yet there are still others who believe this is totally acceptable behaviour. If, then, you leave your house unlocked, are you automatically to blame for any misfortunes that befall you? Or are we simply excusing the actions of the thief by assuming responsibility ourselves?

When leaving your door unlocked, both during the day and at night, you are trusting that no-one undesirable should wish to enter your property without permission.

Is this trust misplaced?

Perhaps these burglaries prove so. In fact, it has been suggested by the London Metropolitan police that something close to 12% of all burglaries occur through doors or windows that have been left unlocked. These are tragic examples of thefts that could have so easily been avoided, and are a severe lesson for the owners.

However, it cannot be ignored that if this statistic is accurate, a staggering 88% of homes were fully secured when thieves achieved entry. If this is the case, can we possibly know for sure that those unlucky 12% would not have been burgled regardless of whether or not their doors had been secured? Dr Jones, leader of a Home Office study into the ‘Locks for Pensioners’ scheme, thinks not; claiming that location is a far more important factor in determining your likelihood of being burgled than security. He states, "The most stringent initiatives against being broken into are taken by the very people who are less likely to be burgled, people who live in nice leafy suburbs in nice semis." This puts students in the prime locations for such offenses, tending to live in or near lower income areas, where less money is spent on security devices.

For students, police believe that leaving your house unsecured is simply too big a risk to take and some areas have taken extreme measures to get the message across. Earlier this year, police in Exeter took to committing ‘burglaries’ on unlocked student houses. They entered the house and placed all the valuables they could find in a bag labelled ‘swag’, and a leaflet warning of how much worse it could have been. This is a clever scheme and certainly one likely to make you think more carefully about security; however, it could be argued that in projects like this, the police are doing some worrying damage. At best, they could be accused of fear-mongering, at worst they are advertising to criminals just how easy it is to commit these crimes – and placing the blame for them on the homeowner or tenant.

Are we not sending the wrong message to criminals if we act like it is our lack of security to blame in these situations, and not the reckless immorality in some areas of society?

It must be remembered, of course, that the police were at a distinct advantage over the average burglar when entering these houses. After all, no well-meaning neighbour is likely to interfere with a uniformed police operation, whereas if this same neighbour had seen an unknown person attempting to enter a house not belonging to them, one would hope they would act to prevent it. However, whether or not they would is perhaps less certain than it once was. When asked on a BBC forum whether or not they regularly locked their doors, most of those that posted replies in the negative, explained that they lived in safe, friendly communities: yet with community spirit at an all-time low, it appears to be more important than ever to protect yourself and your belongings.

The issue leaves me somewhat ambivalent.

I fear that society looks too lightly on opportunist criminals, tending instead to blame honest citizens for the mistakes that lead to these crimes, rather than dealing with the root cause of the problem: the criminal. Nevertheless, these principles do not prevent me from lying in bed worrying whether or not I checked the back door. Perhaps it comes back to the fact that ‘blame’, although an important social factor, is not the most important issue on a personal level. It is more helpful to think in terms of the individual losses one might suffer, whether that is monetary – most insurance policies will not pay out if a door or window is left unlocked – or personal safety; after all, if a person enters your house while you sleep, can you be sure that all they wish to do is steal a laptop?

Regardless of our feelings towards the attitudes of society, it is simply stupid to allow ourselves to be martyred by our morals. It is impossible to know if, or how, we will be burgled – but if the quick action of locking a door is all it takes for the peace of mind of knowing you did everything in your power to prevent it, then surely that’s worth more than the injustice of misplaced blame?

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