“I might go to the neighborhood park or something and then I might say, ‘Well, I’ll go home this way today. Then, while I’m walkin’ up the street I’ll just look around, checkin’ it out,” said one burglar who, since he was caught, apparently didn’t check it out well enough.
They keep a mental card file. All planned out in their heads are the places they think might be prime candidates for their nefarious activities. They walk and drive through neighborhoods and see likely spots. They have specific requirements in mind that make carrying out crimes easier and safer, “safer” meaning their chance of being caught is slim to none.
Depending on the crime they plan to commit, they may also be on the lookout for spots to carry out the second act of their crimes, such as where to commit the rape or dispose of the body.
Bad guys want to break into your rental properties. They want to mug tenants in the parking lots of your rental properties. They want to live in your rental properties and use them to sell drugs, manufacture drugs or buy and sell stolen merchandise. They want to be all-around jerks and miscreants in your rental properties. But they want to do it only if the conditions suit their criteria for what is a good place to commit crime.
We’ll look at how bad guys think when they are contemplating committing a crime. While crooks may often be stupid and ignorant, they can also be crafty and educated at their “occupation.” Often they have learned lessons from other crooks while they were in jail, or years of experience have taught them what works and what doesn’t work when committing crimes.
Over time a property either looks “right” or it doesn’t. The properties that look right are more often the scenes of crime than those that look like the bad guy will get caught. In fact, just like any other “job,” once a crook finds a system that works, he uses it over and over again. The systems that crooks use, while different, have some interchangeable parts that you can throw a monkey wrench into by using some basic counteractive measures.
Criminals don’t just pick crime targets at random. They are careful to one degree or another about the targets they pick. One burglar said, “I look at a house two or three times before I go in it.”
While criminals are opportunists, that is, if they see the opportunity to commit a crime they take it. They also have been known to plan to one degree or another, depending on how the target fits their criteria for being a good place to be a bad guy.
In St. Louis, a study of burglars found that in selecting targets they picked it using information obtained in one of three ways:
1. They had prior knowledge of the target
2. They got inside information
3. They observed their potential targets
Their targets were “asking for it,” they believe. A number of years ago I spoke with a teenager who informed me that if someone left a bicycle unlocked, in plain sight on a front porch, it was the owner’s fault if the bicycle was stolen. They were “asking for it.” This bicycle thief, then, was just the agent of punishment for the lapse in judgment of the soon-to-be-former owner of the bicycle. That thinking is typical of most crooks. Given his thinking, it appears that that teenager is in for a life of crime.
How do we “ask for it”? What cues does a criminal look for that tell him it’s safe to enter a property? D. Kim Rossmo of the Vancouver, BC Police Department, in his book Geographic Profiling uses the acronym VIVA to describe how a bad guy decides where to commit his crime.
V= value or desirability of the target
I= inertia of the target
V= visibility of the target
A= access to and escape from the target
Value or desirability
Determining the value of a target is often the result of some kind of inside information that tells the bad guy that there is something worth stealing and taking a chance on being caught in the property. Crooks get inside information in a number of ways. The easiest involves simply looking through the window. Even a glancing look in a window tells plenty about who lives there, whether they are female, elderly, or a couple with children.

Other simple methods might be seeing an empty box for a new TV set, VCR or computer sitting outside. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there could be some valuable stuff inside that deserves to be stolen because the owner of the stuff was “asking for it” by leaving evidence in plain sight. Inside information can also come from other sleaze balls who have access to information about who owns what valuable possessions.
Inertia
Inertia is the property of matter that causes it to resist any change of its motion in either direction or speed. Best described as the first law of motion of the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton: An object at rest tends to remain at rest, and an object in motion tends to continue in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

This factor doesn’t come into play much with burglaries, since houses and apartments don’t usually move much, and with car break-ins; but it does with person-to-person crimes, such as muggings, rapes and murders. A fast-moving target is harder to commit a crime against than one that is slow, lethargic, and possibly confused.

Someone asleep is an easier victim than is someone who is awake and moving about or easily capable of moving about. Someone with a clear path to a safe place is also a more difficult target than is someone who isn’t sure where he or she is going or who has to traverse long, difficult terrain.
Visibility
Visibility goes both ways, how well a potential crime scene can be seen, and how likely a bad guy is to be seen committing a crime in it. Certain factors about the visibility of a property send a message to a crook that this site either is or is not a “safe” place to be a criminal.

They learn the cues almost instinctively after years of committing crimes. They can get a “bad” feeling about a site, just as potential crime victims get a bad feeling about a space such as a parking lot at night.

Crooks get a “good” feeling about a property if they can skulk up to it unseen from the street or inside the house. High fences and shrubbery, poor lighting and a number of other factors make a bad guy rubs his hands with anticipation of how easy it will be to break in.

On the other hand, clear visibility from the street, low shrubbery and fences, and good lighting give cues to a crook that maybe some other property would be better.

Access to and escape from
An enormous concern of crooks is how they are going to get away. They look for multiple escape routes so that if they are discovered in the middle of committing a crime, they have more than one way to escape.

One study showed that the winding streets and cul-de-sacs of the suburbs are less favorable to criminals than are the grid-system streets of the older cities, because the grid system provides criminals with multiple escape routes. Corner lots also are more attractive to criminals because there are almost automatically two escape routes.

Knowing how bad guys think will do a lot toward helping you design and structure your properties to make them less attractive to those who would commit crimes against the property or live in your rental properties and commit crimes while living there.

What to do:
• Make all of your property easily visible both from the street and the building.
• Keep shrubbery and fences low or eliminate them altogether.
• Mark pathways well.
• Define the edges of your properties with anything from a difference in type of surface to a low hedge or shrub.
• Redefine parking lots so there is only one way in and out.

There is nothing you can do about tenants who leave evidence of valuables or the valuables themselves in plain sight, except to send out notices warning them of the dangers of being less than careful with their possessions.

Something about a safety-conscious design of the exterior of property makes tenants and their guests feel safer. At the same time it makes bad guys want to try a different target. People who feel safe in their homes tend to stay longer. With a little effort you can make bad guys think your properties aren’t great places at all.