Shoplifting offenses up to 20 years

Police recorded theft offenses in England and Wales have reached a 20-year high.

Image: Federation of Independent Traders

There were 469,788 theft offenses recorded by the police in the year ending June 2024, a 29% increase on the previous year’s 365,173 offences.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the figure was the highest since current police recording practices began for the year ending March 2003 and was mainly due to a three per cent rise in total theft offenses ( up to 1.8 million).

Crime, Police and Fire Minister Dame Diana Johnson said the statistics showed “the scale of the challenge to make streets safer”.

“Too many city centers have been decimated by record levels of theft and communities have been rocked by rising levels of knife crime, theft and robbery. This cannot continue,” she said.

“This Government will restore neighborhood policing across the country, put thousands more dedicated officers on our streets and scrap the £200 theft threshold, ending effective impunity for thieves who steal low-value goods.”

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who chaired her first meeting of the National Police Council this week, says the Government will legislate to create a stand-alone offense for assaulting a retail worker and repeal Section 176 of the Anti-Social Behavior Act , Crime and Policing Act 2014 to make it clear that all shoplifting is illegal and to remove the perception that shoplifters will get away with it.

While burglaries continue to be at a record high, the Home Office says the volume of charges for the crime has increased significantly (by 56%), which shows that the police are taking this crime more seriously and are increasing enforcement activity. But he says more needs to be done.

The Home Office said: “We will reinvigorate collaboration between the police and the retail sector by setting up a Retail Crime Forum to help turbocharge initiatives like Pegasus and identify what more needs to be done to protect communities.”

The latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) show that while most types of crime did not show a statistically significant change, there were notable increases in robbery, violence causing harm and consumer and retail fraud retail.

Robbery has returned to levels last seen before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, rising to around 139,000 incidents compared to 60,000 incidents in the year ending June 2023, although the ONS said police recorded crime being “the source his favorite for robbery”. These figures show that robbery has increased by six per cent (to 81,931 offences) compared to the year ending June 2023 (77,106 offences)

Violence with injury also returned to pre-pandemic levels and rose to around 562,000 incidents from around 376,000 offenses in the past 12 months.

Consumer and retail fraud increased by 19% to approximately 963,000 incidents.

The number of homicides decreased slightly (562 crimes) compared to the hearing that ended in June 2023 (578 crimes).

Crimes involving knives or sharp instruments (excluding Greater Manchester Police) increased by 4% (to 50,973 offences), compared to 49,187 the previous year.). This was two per cent less than in the year ending March 2020 (51,982 offences)

Crimes involving firearms fell by five per cent to 5,996, compared to 6,327 crimes in the year ending June 2023.