Crime and victims
Mark your property
Marking your property is one of the simplest and most effective ways of protecting your possessions.
Marking your valuable property with your name or address is easy and effective. If your property is ever stolen, it makes it more difficult to sell on, and it makes it easier for the police to trace your belongings back to you if found.
Two methods
Metropolitan Police recommend two ways to mark your property:
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engraving or punching your address and postcode into your property
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marking antiques or valuable property with an ultra-violet marker
How to do it
For the first method, use a fine drill or sharp-pointed tool (inexpensive permanent marking kits can be purchased at most home improvement stores) to neatly mark your equipment with your address and postcode.
For bicycles, mowers, engines and other heavy metal objects, you can use a punching tool and a hammer to mark your address and post code.
For the second method, you can purchase permanent ultra-violet (UV) marker pens and mark the same information on more valuable possessions. The marks will be invisible to the naked eye.
However, UV marks will fade with time and should be redone periodically.
When police recover stolen property, they search them for any markings that might identify the owners, so this is a good way to ensure that you can get your property back should it ever be stolen.
