I used to live in a detatched house in a village near a motorway junction on the M56. Burglaries happened fairly regularly: steal car, off the motorway, burgle a few houses, go back onto motorway, whoosh. Mostly small scale stuff, cash, VCRs and so on.
If we went out for an evening I used to leave a light or two on, a radio upstairs because burglers can't easily peer in to see if there really is a person in the house, and a free with a Sunday paper Gene Pitney CD on repeat in the sitting room. Awful noise. 24 hours from Tinnitus and similar songs. Never burgled. I still have the CD and sometimes do the same thing even though we are in a much lower risk area.
I can confidently report a 100% correlation between not being burgled and having a Gene Pitney CD playing - based on a fairly small sample, so may not be statistically valid.
(but I do agree with the general observation that you can't prevent unless you choose to live in a fortress, you can only deter so they go elsewhere)