Only one in three burglars think they stand a serious chance of getting caught, new Home Office research reveals.

Ministers will launch a campaign tomorrow to urge householders to protect themselves by avoiding obvious temptations for thieves.
However, this follows a rare government-funded study of career burglars, showing that many deterrents traditionally advocated by politicians, from high-visibility policing to improved security, seem to have little effect on housebreakers. Criminals are influenced mainly by whether they think there is anything worth stealing.