Two of my favorite related articles:
- Serendipity in robbery target selection[1]. Interviews with chronic robbers talks about how they cruise around looking for marks. They are strategic though in their "foraging".
- The role of territoriality in crime prevention: A field experiment[2]. Experiment with leaving a $10 gift card on a desk in Uni library. (So similar to here, unlikely people going to library intending to steal.) There were thefts - in one condition 1/30 people who passed by nicked the card.
Since a single chronic offender can commit many crimes, the current patterns of car break ins in cities are IMO likely driven by a small number of "professional" offenders, moreso than victim behavior.
[1] http://www.d-ddaily.com/images/6-1-15_Serendipity%20in%20Rob...
[2] https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1301910/1/Wortley_%26_...