Home security is sold as products and it mostly is not products. The measures that make the largest difference are free, need no maintenance, cannot fail, and work continuously whether you are in, out, asleep or away for a fortnight.
This page is the layers underneath the hardware. See reinforcing a door and its frame and ground floor windows and glazing for the carpentry, and read them second rather than first.
Why hardware is the last layer
Opportunistic trouble looks for the easy option. It wants concealment, a quick way in, and a low chance of being seen.
Every layer below removes one of those, and it removes it before anybody has to try a door.
Hardware still matters, and it matters most once everything above it is done. Spending on a good lock while the side passage is unlit and screened by a six foot hedge is spending in the wrong order.
Being overlooked
Low at the front, high at the back is the standard advice and it is sound.
- A tall front hedge or fence feels private and provides cover for anybody working on a door or a window. It hides them from the street, which is the only thing watching.
- Cut back planting that screens the front door, the ground floor windows or the drive from the pavement.
- Trim anything that blocks the view from a neighbour's window. Their sightline is a real asset.
- Gravel on paths and the drive is quietly effective. It cannot be walked on silently and it works in the dark, in the rain, and when everybody is asleep.
- The side passage and the back are where entry happens, because the front is watched. Look hard at whether the gate, the passage and the rear are visible from anywhere at all.
Light
A light that comes on and stays on beats a floodlight that dazzles.
- Modest, well-aimed light that shows the approach and the door. Very bright light creates deep shadow next to it, which helps nobody, and it annoys neighbours who then stop looking out.
- Movement-activated at the side and rear, on a sensible timer.
- Aim it down, at the ground it should light, not out at head height and not into a neighbour's bedroom.
- Solar units work adequately for a side passage and need no wiring, which matters in a power cut only if they are charged.
- Light the gate, the passage, the bin store and the back door. Those are the dark places.
Inside, a couple of lamps on variable timers do more than a hall light left burning, which reads as absence rather than presence.
Looking occupied
The whole trick is that an occupied house is an unattractive one.
- Post and deliveries not visible through the letterbox or piling up. Ask a neighbour to take them in.
- Bins out and back in on the right days. Bins left out for a week say the house is empty.
- A car on the drive, or a neighbour parking on it.
- Lights on timers that vary, and ideally in more than one room. A single lamp coming on at exactly 6pm every evening is a pattern.
- Curtains not left closed in daylight. Closed curtains in the middle of the day is a signal.
- A radio on a timer is cheap and surprisingly effective, because it sounds like people.
- Grass cut and the garden looking used.
- Do not announce absence on social media, and that includes the holiday photographs posted while you are still away. See digital self-defence.
Not advertising
Do the night walk. Stand on the pavement after dark with the lights on inside and look in, from the front, from the side, and from the back if you can get there.
Whatever you can see is what is on offer.
- Car keys visible from a window, or reachable through a letterbox. This is the commonest one, and fishing keys through a door is an established method. Keys go out of sight and away from the door.
- Laptops, tablets, phones, cameras, tools, bikes left where they can be seen.
- Packaging by the bin for anything expensive is a note saying what is now inside. Break it down and put it in the bin rather than beside it.
- An open garage, which shows the contents to everybody who passes.
Not supplying the tools
Almost everything used to get into a house is found in its own garden.
- Ladders, chained or locked away. A ladder left out is access to every first floor window you have never locked.
- Wheelie bins, which get climbed on. Move them away from fences and low roofs, or lock them.
- Garden furniture and water butts, same reason.
- Tools, spades, crowbars, hammers left in an unlocked shed.
- Bricks and rubble left in a pile.
- The spare key under the mat, the stone, or the pot. There are perhaps six places people hide keys and everybody knows all six. Leave the spare with a neighbour instead.
Lock the shed, because a shed is a tool shop, and its contents are the reason a difficult entry becomes an easy one.
Neighbours
Comfortably the most effective measure available and the one that takes the longest to build.
A neighbour who recognises you, your car and your visitors is observation that no system replaces. They notice the van that has been parked for two days, the person trying door handles, and the fact that your curtains have not moved since Tuesday.
- Know their names, and make sure they know yours.
- Exchange numbers with the two or three closest.
- Tell each other when you are away, and take each other's post in.
- Hold a spare key for each other, which is safer than any hiding place.
- Agree to check on each other in a power cut or a cold snap, particularly on anybody older or alone. That is a preparedness measure and a security measure at once.
This is the layer that also does everything else. The neighbour who notices a break-in is the neighbour who notices when an older resident has not opened their curtains, who has a ladder you can borrow, and who will share a freezer in a power cut. See community and mutual aid.
It is also the slowest to build, which is why it belongs at the top of the list rather than the bottom. It cannot be bought on the day.
The walk round
Do this once, properly, with a notebook, and it will find more than any amount of reading.
- Start at the pavement after dark, lights on inside. What can you see?
- Walk the boundary. Where could somebody get in unseen? What is screening them?
- Try the gate. Does it lock? Does it announce itself?
- Look at the back and the side, and be honest about whether anybody can see them.
- Find the ladder, the bins, the furniture and the tools. Anything that gets somebody up or in.
- Check the shed.
- Stand in the dark spots and see how comfortable they are to stand in. That comfort is the thing you are removing.
- Look at the doors and windows last, which is where hardware comes in.
Write down the three worst things and fix those. It is usually a hedge, a light and a ladder, and it usually costs under an hour.