Thinking back to the 70s Wright and Rossi (a couple very innovative criminologists) did a bunch of interviews with prisoners. Now, normally prisoner interviews are very unreliable. After all, honest people don't usually end up in the joint for burglary and armed robbery. But when you ask a whole bunch of different ones in a lot of different places and they don't have anything to gain by lying to you the results can be useful. Across the board there were three things that most discouraged these guys from targetting a house: 1) Bright lights and noise 2) Large, loud dogs 3) Homeowner with a gun
