Burglary. It's upsetting, personal - and preventable. Here, an ex-burglar with a conscience tells us how the cowardly thieves plan their raids.

I woke terrified in the early hours of Monday morning and sat bolt upright, roused from sleep by a loud noise. There were lights being turned on and off in the garden and someone was by my back door.

I couldn't remember if I had locked it and broke into a cold sweat. Someone could already be in my house.

I was on my own with two children sleeping and I was frozen with fear. Even worse, I had no idea what to do.

I lay still, my ears straining, trying desperately not to panic and to think logically about the best way to react. Should I run downstairs? Should I stay quiet and hope the thief took what he wanted and go away? Should I phone the police? Should I turn on the lights or find something to defend myself with? What if it wasn't a burglar but someone with more sinister motives?

After 40 minutes I summoned up the courage to phone a friend from my mobile phone which I keep by the bed, and ask for advice. He told me to get dressed, turn on the lights and go downstairs.

There was no-one there and the back door was locked. I deduced that someone had probably been shining a torch into the French windows and had woken me by trying to open my back door.

I eventually got to sleep, with all the lights on, fully clothed and worried. Friends have been staying ever since in case the would-be burglar comes back. But I was lucky. The intruder didn't get in. For thousands of people every year my nightmare is their reality.

To bridge the link between why people do this, how victims react and what you should do if it happens to you, I spoke to a convicted burglar, a victim of burglary and the police.

There are two kinds of burglar, ones like me who always run if disturbed, and the others who are always armed, normally with knives," Tom says. "And I've never met a burglar who isn't a drug addict."

Although now determined to remain reformed, having completed rehabilitation for his crack and heroin addiction, Tom has committed numerous burglaries in his lifetime, mainly in the West Country.

His regular itinerary was waking up, burgling a house by 10am and selling the gear half an hour later to buy drugs. He has been in and out of prison for years.

The 27-year-old, who now lives in Oxford, came from a broken home, was abused as a child and by the age of 12 was smoking and stealing drugs from his mother's boyfriend. It led to an addiction which took him a further 15 years to beat. He was kicked out by both his parents and his drug habit got him fired from numerous jobs.

Eventually he became homeless. He slept in shelters at night and burgled by day - the only way he knew of funding his drug habit, which at times cost £300 a day.

When Tom had reached rock bottom, he began burgling at night and it is these crimes that now haunt him.

"I remember walking into a bedroom and thinking the house was empty. I turned on a light and there was a woman asleep in bed. She woke up immediately and started screaming and I just ran off," he says. "Another time I looked at the photos and recognised one of the boys in the picture. I'd been to school with him and I found out later I was burgling his grandparents house."

Guilt is now something he is coming to terms with but he is very matter-of-fact about the emotions of a junkie.

"You have no emotions. You don't feel anything, guilt, happiness, sorrow, pain. You are void of all feelings. All you care about is getting your next fix," he says.

"I would pick up a stereo or video and think 'this could buy me three £20 rocks'. You didn't think about the people who lived there or what it would mean to them. It was just a way of life."

He admits that when he started burgling as a teenager it was for the excitement rather than financial gain and he became addicted to the buzz. He started off on a small scale, stealing from school and his parents, taking cars, shoplifting and pilfering from garden sheds, before he committed his first house burglary.

And it was too easy. At least now he can sit back and tell us what burglars look out for and who needs to be most security conscious.

"If I burgled by day I would always knock on the front door first to see if the residents were in. If they were I would never go back. If not, I would go round the back and if I could get in I would," he says.

"The best houses to burgle are semi-detached or end-of-terrace. But any house where you can get into the garden was a target. Some days, when I was desperate for drugs, I would just kick the door in, but mostly it was just breaking in through the back.

"If the houses were alarmed, had thick multi-locking double glazed windows, had a dog there or lights on I would try somewhere else.

"I would advise people to put broken glass on their walls or barbed wire because an addict won't bother and will just walk on until they find a more accessible property."