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Your Best Defence Against House Robberies in South Africa

Professor Rudolph Zinn and Brigadier Piet Byleveld shed light on how criminals plan and execute a house robbery, and what can be done to prevent this happening to you.

The best way to prevent a house robbery in South Africa includes keeping small dogs inside your house, electric fences, alarms and security sensors, and employing an armed response service.

This is according to research by professor Rudolph Zinn from UNISA’s School of Criminal Justice and Police Practice.

Zinn conducted in-depth interviews with 30 perpetrators who were convicted and incarcerated for aggravated robbery.

What Zinn found was that most house robbers were males in their early twenties, and that they would typically work in groups of four.

On average, each perpetrator admitted to having committed 103 crimes, and their main motivation was economic gain.

How criminals select their targets

According to Zinn, criminals select their targets because of wealth. Other demographical factors such as race played no part in the decisions of the perpetrators.

The majority of criminals said they chose targets where they had some sort of inside information, which often involved talking to domestic workers, gardeners, or security guards.

Robbers prefer neighbourhoods that have many entrance and exit points, with easy access to main roads and where street security was low or non-existent.

However, low security was not the biggest factor when selecting a target. Instead, criminals first looked for households with valuable items to steal.

Investigator Brigadier Piet Byleveld said keeping a safe can be particularly alluring to criminals, because they see it as containing high-value items.