Do some gardening. That's what you should be doing to deter the criminals. If you have certain types of shrubs in your garden you can put people off. It's basically one step away from telling you to get a moat.
The advice, in the form of a leaflet, goes into enough detail to tell you which plant varieties to get. Is this a police force or Ground Force? I understand that a thorny bush will provide some form of deterrent against the ingress of a wrong 'un but it also feels like it's avoiding the other obvious solution to the increasing crime numbers: The police could catch the burglars.
It's heading towards victim blaming to pass the buck to the gardening skills of the homeowner. It's not always easy for someone to put a spiky border outside their home. If you rent a flat it's only possible to have a berberis and crataegus window box, which would be too easy to just lift away.
For those of us with young children we might not want to fill our garden with skin shredding shrubs. It would be easier to fill in the odd insurance claim than cover all of those cuts with a Spider-Man plaster.
It's not a perfect solution. If having verdant foliage would enough to stop villains the Blue Peter garden wouldn't have been broken into in 1983. I still remember how upset Janet Ellis was.
The suggested plants include pyracantha, known as firethorn. Its dense growth and thorns should keep people out. Flowering quince, chaenomeles, has a thorny barrier that would be difficult to penetrate. Holly and mahonia have spiky leaves and privet grows into a thick hedge.
You could go a step further. Have you thought about some stylish bars on your windows? A vault style door could add a nice look and security to your property. I don't know if you'd like to have a laser firing sentry drone but you could probably get one from Temu or Wish.
Instead of the police handing out a leaflet about how hard they will work to protect us they make it seem like if we're robbed it's because we didn't Mad Max our front garden enough.
How long till the police have a dedicated unit helping us grow the right kind of tree? It’s name? Special branch.
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