Marking your property is a positive way to fight crime, it can act as a deterrent, it allows you to prove ownership and helps you to identify your property easily if it is offered for sale. Marking your property also provides a means for the Police to identify stolen goods and return them to their owners.

What to Mark Your Property With:

You can put any kind of mark on your property to distinguish it from other similar items. Warwickshire Police, Warwickshire Business Watch and Neighbourhood Watch recommend using your postcode prefixed with the number of your address, i.e. 23 B78 1XX. A post code is unique to your property, which most organisations recognise and allows the goods to be identified and returned to you. Just putting a name or symbol on the property makes it identifiable, but does not provide details to the Police of who owns the property and where it came from.

It is strongly recommended that you take a photo of all your valuables and make a note of any distinguishing marks, including where and how you have property marked it. You can then print the photographs off and keep in a safe place, load onto your computer or keep on a memory stick.

By having these records if your property is stolen you will have as much information as possible to give to the Police and also pass to retailers and other organisations to help locate your property.