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Residential Security: Houses and Apartments, Public and Private

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Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management

Definition

Residential security relates primarily to physical protection from external sources of crime-related harms potentially experienced by people in their abode and secondarily includes neighborhood safety as a partial prerequisite for being and feeling safe at home.

Introduction

Various forms of burglary constitute the most common threat to residential security (Weisel 2004). Burglary entails unauthorized access and removal of goods, sometimes simply by trespassing. In other cases, entry is forced – often referred to as “breaking and entering” – and damage to property can ensue even when offenders are unsuccessful in obtaining valuables. Burglars are generally motivated by material gain and focus on targets that are of immediate benefit to them, such as cash or goods that can be easily exchanged for cash (Bennett and Wright 1984; Weisel 2004). Unemployment and social marginalization are common, but not exclusive, factors in offender dispositions (Fallesen et al. 2018). Burglary...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, QLD, Australia

    Tim Prenzler

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  1. Tim Prenzler
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Correspondence to Tim Prenzler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA

    Lauren R. Shapiro

  2. Dept. of Security, Fire & Emergency Mgmt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

    Marie-Helen Maras

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Prenzler, T. (2019). Residential Security: Houses and Apartments, Public and Private. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_232-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_232-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69891-5

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