At 9pm on a Sunday night, Will Ertler looked from the apartment window to see his car enveloped by flames.
A student based in Reid, Mr Ertler often had his car parked on the street near his home but unluckily, it led to the vehicle's demise.
"My housemate looked up from his room and just saw flames essentially coming from the street. It was huge, they obviously used petrol," he said.
While police and fire services came to the scene, they informed Mr Ertler there wasn't much that could be done without witnesses.
"I suppose it was kind of opportunistic, like they picked a car that was sort of sitting by itself on the street," Mr Ertler said.
The experience was not crippling for Mr Ertler, as he had insurance and other means to get around.
But he found the entire affair "spooky".
"You sort of feel a bit less at home in your own community. You don't feel as comfortable being there just because you know that there's people going around damaging stuff for no reason," he said.
Another victim of this crime, who wished to remain anonymous, had their home broken into when the perpetrator found their car keys, stole the vehicle and set it on fire.
The man lives in a sharehouse and the group was away for Easter when the crime occurred.
All members of the household had something stolen.
"It was pretty devastating, particularly when I found out my insurance doesn't cover the car being set alight," he said.
'660 different explanations'
Criminology expert and senior lecturer at the Australian National University, Adam Masters, brainstormed the scenario with his students. The group's main answer for why car fires occurred was: "It depends."
Motives could include insurance fraud, revenge or waste disposal, which Dr Masters said was: "One of those things that [showed why] this could be 660 different explanations."
While Mr Ertler and the unnamed man from O'Connor had none of these issues, there are other theories in criminology on why people are motivated to commit these crimes.
Some perpetrators were simply "thrillseekers, people looking for excitement".
Another motive was "opportunity theory" - when a perpetrator finds the right place and time to commit an offence.
From 18 years of experience with the Australian Federal Police, Dr Masters found the situation was more "an insurance inconvenience" for victims as it was unlikely anyone would get hurt.
"Don't be attached to a car. It's a lump of metal. It's a hard thing for people to do. People give their cars names ... it's a very personal space and that's probably what makes it hurt a lot as well," he said.
"For the type of crime, you could probably safely say it's going to be a young person that's doing this."
It's 'the modus operandi'
In 2021, the ACT had 125 car fires. In the first four months of 2022, 33 cars have been set alight. Burglaries were a bit higher at 1091 in 2021, while so far this year there have been 410.
ACT Policing Inspector Craig McPherson said the numbers could jump around month by month as "burglaries often aligned with holidays" and "cohorts of offenders" ebbed and flowed.
"There's a number of operations where you see the numbers start to spike and then the numbers decline and in part that's to do with operations that we instigate that are intelligence-led," he said.
The security systems of cars mean they are "fairly much impossible" to steal alone without a key, causing burglaries into households being linked to car theft and fires.
"One of the biggest concerns is, crooks are breaking into houses in order to access cars and a lot of those break-ins occur when people are home," he said.
The winter period when people leave their vehicles to warm up is another criminal "method to pinch cars", as tactics constantly change.
Mr McPherson said theft was always changing as "it's just the medium for which it occurs" as technologies, perpetrators and situations changed.
"It's just the, to be Latin about it, the modus operandi," he said.
Perpetrators of these crimes could be repeat offenders who were "certainly in the younger groups" and many were "driven by drug use".
The ACT government has invested in their reducing recidivism plan in October 2021, setting out a goal of reducing repeat offending by 25 per cent by 2025, which Mr McPherson said was a part of police priorities.
Programs like victim-oriented "restorative justice" can be used, when someone affected by a crime had "an opportunity to explain how the crook's behaviour has impacted upon their lives and they get to negotiate some form of restitution".
"Most of the programs in relation to assisting people to amend their behaviours ... is really only available through the criminal justice system," he said.
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