ABSTRACT
Burglary has not always been singled out as a major problem. Indeed, only a couple of decades ago chief constables could go on record to question the assumption that they should devote extra resources to what was, after all, ‘only’ a property crime. However, by the late 1980s, the status of burglary, or at least household burglary, had been transformed to the extent that it was seen in the UK almost as ‘public enemy number one’.
