Opinion: Home security and safety key as crime rates rise

In a simpler and more innocent time, you could leave your door open, day and night. Now Queensland leads the nation in buying cameras, alarms and fortress-like security.

YOU’VE heard the cliche – Queensland used to be such a safe place to live that you never had to lock your doors.

How positively twee and nostalgic that notion seems today, but it was true.

Both sets of my grandparents, living in old Queenslanders in Brisbane’s inner-west and north, would always leave their front doors wide open for the duration of the day, and in summer, well into the night.

A door open meant you were home. It was also an invitation to neighbours to drop in for a cup of tea or a Fourex longneck and a bit of a gossip.

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Now we exist in the days of the deadbolt. And electronic surveillance. And cameras. And alarms. And anything else you might want to throw into the barriers we now erect around our homes and ourselves.

Queensland used to be such a safe place to live that you never had to lock your doors.

It was revealed this week that where Queenslanders were once the most innocently welcoming, we are leading the nation in the scramble for security technology.

Recent research has reportedly revealed that in excess of 9000 homes and properties across Brisbane were broken into in the past year. It also said Queenslanders were the most tech-savvy when it came to home security compared with all other Australian states and territories.

A special report in The Sunday Mail earlier this year revealed that break-and-enters in Brisbane city were on the rise, with most offences occurring between 2pm and 10pm on a Friday.

In 2018/19 Sunnybank recorded the highest number of break-ins, closely followed by the Brisbane CBD, Eight Mile Plains and Forest Lake.

University of Queensland criminologist Lorraine Mazerolle reportedly said property crime was “quite complicated”.

“When you look at the suburbs which have the most break-ins, what you don’t realise is it’s generally 5 per cent of that area that generates about 80 per cent of the problem,” she said.

“Even in those high crime areas, crime is really highly concentrated to particular homes and streets, particularly with property crime.”

Dr Mazerolle said so-called crime “hot spots” had what she called “crime attractors” which triggered repeat offences such as ready access to train stations and main shopping strips or larger shopping malls – tools used by criminals to find “easy routes to theft”.

“For property crime in particular, people will go to the least amount of effort to get the biggest amount of gain,” she reportedly said.

“Easily portable items, such as laptops, phones and jewellery are the most common items to be taken.

Easily portable items, such as laptops, phones and jewellery are the most common items to be taken.

“They are looking for high value items they can get quickly and easily.”

I personally know what Dr Mazerolle says is true from my years living in Sydney (before I saw the light and moved back home to Brisbane).

I was settled in a small one-level terrace in the suburb of Leichhardt in Sydney’s inner-west. One day my partner and I decided we needed a new washing machine. We went to a whitegoods store and purchased the machine, and a few days later it was delivered to Leichhardt. So far, so good.

Two days later, and yes, on a Friday, between 2pm and 10pm, we went out to a dinner party straight after work and got home around 11pm.

Upon opening the front door and turning on the hallway light, we discovered we’d been burgled. Not just burgled but cleaned out. Completely.

It would be easier and quicker to describe what they didn’t take. All televisions and electronic goods were gone. Furniture. The dining room table. The couch. You name it, it had been lifted.

Professor Lorraine Mazerolle has developed the Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Honours) at the University of Queensland. Picture: Tim Marsden

Stunned, I went to pick up the landline telephone (this was before the advent of the affordable mobile phone) to call the police.

It, too, was gone.

I went next door and roused our beautiful Italian neighbours. “May I use your phone,” I asked.

“What’s wrong with yours?” they replied, puzzled.

“It’s been stolen. We’ve been burgled.”

The elderly couple wandered into our house to see for themselves and were greeted by our now echoey, hollow dwelling.

It was then that Mama, permanently dressed in a black skirt, black blouse and a black cardigan, pulled that cardigan up and over her head, thrust her hands out before her and began to wail and wail, moving through the little house, banishing bad spirits.

I’m not sure what was more shocking – the empty house, or Mama’s hair-raising howling.

Still, we used their phone and the police duly arrived and nothing was ever heard of the matter again.

We worked out, however, that the thieves had come down the side gate and removed a small pane of glass in the kitchen door to gain access to the house. It was precisely the route taken by the washing machine delivery men just 48 hours earlier.

A few days later a neighbour across the road came to say hello.

“You’re still here?” he said.

“Why wouldn’t we be here?” I asked.

“Because we thought you’d moved out last Friday, when the removal truck was outside your place.”

We have no fancy security technology in our current place, despite our epic Sydney break-and-enters. No. We have a three-year-old German Shepherd, whose daddy was number one in the NSW police dog squad. I invite anyone to come and rob us again. Please. You’re welcome to try.