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What motivates a creature to smash a window or door, invade some innocent person’s home and steal their personal possessions?

In the last two weeks, I there have had two separate incidents of friends being broken into and robbed.

The first case was a friend from Electroacoustics at Concordia. Two weeks before the end of semester, he comes home to a busted front door and his apartment a mess. While he was at school, between the hours of 10am and 2pm, thieves made off with his Macbook Pro, sound card, external audio controller, external hard drive (with work on it), monitor, speakers, TV, etc.

Last week, one of V’s family members came home to find the door dead-locked. She banged the door and cried out, and heard the robbers escaping through the back door. Their entire apartment was ransacked. They lost the TV & entertainment unit, jewelry, bottles of wine, even his passport got stolen. The thieves had smashed in the window in the back-door to the kitchen and let themselves in.

The worst thing stolen in both of these cases is a sense of security. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel to have my home violated and desecrated by malicious strangers. This cruel and selfish deed must leave an awful spiritual stain. How terrible it must be to have to clean that mess.

What drives a person to inflict this kind of violation on another?

In the second case, the victims had the impression that the things that were taken were selected for their value as potential Christmas gifts. At first, I couldn’t believe this. Who would give a stolen gift? A desperate person, I suppose. It saddens me that people can get so caught up in the cultural pressures of materialism that they must steal from someone’s home.

Since then, we’ve changed a few things around our place. Most notably, the keys have been removed from the inside of the front and back door. Our doors don’t have latches, they have key holes on both sides. When we first moved in, I thought this was a cheap lock, a deficiency. But now I realize that it is to prevent someone from smashing the window in the door and reaching in to unlock the door.

Our first move was to put the keys in a drawer somewhere. I realize that a thief doesn’t follow the same etiquette as most house guests. So “a drawer” isn’t very strong protection for hiding the keys. I have since found a much better place to put them. (I won’t post it here. I’m not hopelessly disclosive!)

Do you think there is a trend between Christmas stress and break-in robberies? It gives me chills.

What do you think motivates this kind of behavior? Am I crazy to emphasize invasion as the primary difference between a B&E and digital theft?