Danish police are to ask convicted burglars to fill out surveys in the hope gleaning information on how best to catch them.
Northern Zealand will quiz convicts on their typical targets, techniques, motives, as well as how they dispose of stolen goods.
“We want to know how they decide on one specific house over its neighbour,” Finn Bernth Andersen, police commissioner in Frederikssund, told local newspaper Frederiksborg Amts Avis.
The survey, which will be voluntary and anonymous, will be given to burglars currently serving sentences as well as to former offenders known to the police.
Between 2010 and 2011 alone, Frederikssund saw a 16 percent increase in the number of break-ins. There is concern that the criminals may give dishonest answers in the questionnaire, but the police claim it is worth a try as an alternative crime-fighting method.
“We will do anything we can to lower the number of burglaries,” Andersen said.