Do Video Doorbells Deter Burglars? The Published Evidence

Where does the claim that video doorbells cut burglary come from?

Most of the numbers in circulation trace back to Ring itself.

When Amazon announced its purchase of Ring in 2018, it cited a Los Angeles Police Department pilot from 2015 that it said reduced burglaries in neighborhoods "by as much as 55%." MIT Technology Review's 2018 investigation reported that Ring installed around 40 devices in the Wilshire Park neighborhood beginning in May 2015, and announced a 55% reduction over six months compared with surrounding neighborhoods, a period Ring later described as seven months. The LAPD's own follow-up analysis, covering 10 months from July 2015, found a 21% decline in burglaries against the prior year, which it normalized to 42% against other neighborhoods.

MIT Technology Review then checked the city's public data and found that the three districts involved, taken together, had year-on-year increases in burglaries over both the seven-month and 10-month periods. It also examined a later Ring claim of a 50% burglary drop in two Newark, New Jersey neighborhoods in 2018. Burglaries fell there, but the publication found other parts of the city saw drops of up to 65%, citywide burglary was down nearly 30% that year, and the Newark police department said it could not confirm Ring's figures.

A single small neighborhood with no random assignment cannot separate the effect of doorbells from everything else that moves burglary rates. That is the core problem with every vendor figure we found.

What do independent studies show?

Independent research on doorbells specifically is thin, and it does not show a crime reduction.

The MIT Media Lab study (2022). Dan Calacci, Jeffrey J. Shen and Alex Pentland published "The Cop In Your Neighbor's Doorbell" in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, mapping Ring Neighbors use across the continental U.S. Its focus is how people use and share doorbell video. In a 2023 interview with Undark, Calacci said the team found no real correlation between Neighbors posting and crime rates across counties or census tracts, and that in Los Angeles, posting rates did not match LAPD theft and burglary data for 2019. That is a correlation study, not a test of whether doorbells prevent crime, but it is the largest independent dataset on doorbell use we found.

A London trial still in progress. University College London lists a large randomized controlled trial of smart video doorbells, funded by and run with the Metropolitan Police Service, examining residential burglary and other offenses around the home. The project page states there is no independent evaluation of their effectiveness in preventing crime. We could not find published results as of October 2026.

The nearest proxy: CCTV research. A 40-year systematic review and meta-analysis by Piza, Welsh, Farrington and Thomas (2019, Criminology & Public Policy) found CCTV associated with about a 13% crime reduction overall and about 12% in residential areas, against control areas. It also found actively monitored systems associated with about a 15% reduction, while passively monitored systems showed no significant effect. A home doorbell that records for the owner to check later is closer to passive monitoring.

Security devices in general. Tseloni and colleagues (2017, Security Journal), using Crime Survey for England and Wales data, found external lights and door double locks or deadlocks the most effective single devices. That study did not test video doorbells.

Do burglars say cameras change their minds?

Burglars' own answers are the strongest support for a deterrent effect, with caveats.

In a survey of 422 incarcerated burglars in North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio, led by UNC Charlotte's Joseph Kuhns, most respondents said they weighed signs of increased security when choosing a target, explicitly including outdoor cameras or other surveillance equipment. About 60% said they would seek another target if an alarm was present, and the university reported that alarms and surveillance equipment had a similar effect on target selection.

The caveats: these are self-reports from people who were caught, the university's published summary refers to outdoor cameras and surveillance equipment generally rather than doorbells, and stated intentions are not observed behavior. The survey design and its limits are covered in do security signs deter burglars, and the wider research on target selection is in how burglars choose houses.

What about package theft?

Package theft is the crime doorbells are most marketed against, and it is the least studied. Criminologist Ben Stickle, who researches package theft, told Undark in 2023 that doorbell deterrence has not really been studied, and described how many steps must go right before footage helps: the camera has to capture the theft clearly, the victim has to report it, police have to take a report, and someone has to identify the person on video.

What a doorbell does reliably is tell you a package arrived and show you what happened to it, provided it is recording. Ring saves no video without a paid plan, so an unsubscribed Ring doorbell shows a theft only if you happen to be watching live. Keeping packages off the porch altogether is more dependable, as laid out in package theft prevention.

The fair conclusion, on the published evidence: buy a video doorbell to see who is at your door and to have a record when something goes wrong, not on the promise that it will stop a burglary. If you are choosing one on those terms, the video doorbell buying guide covers power, storage and cost.