Why is theft so high?

Figures out today show a country with levels of surveyed crime still at historic lows (just a quarter of the 1995 peak) but with two big exceptions. Personal theft rose by 40 per cent compared with the year before, and shoplifting is at its highest level since records began in 2003. What’s going on?

‘These figures show the disgraceful dereliction of the last Tory government on law and order,’ said Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary. Is this fair?

Today’s figures show total crime at roughly half the level the Conservatives inherited from Labour in 2010. Incidents of theft from the person peaked at 708,000 in 2009 – and hit a low of 248,000 last year, according to today’s official survey. They rebounded to 347,000 last year, lower than any year that Cooper was in power. There’s the 40 per cent rise. The story is that crime has stayed near its historic low, with a significant blip. But let’s focus on one of the blips: street thefts of expensive personal items (watches, jewellery, phones).

I wrote about this for The Spectator last month. Watches seem to be one of the prize targets for Britain’s criminals, with tens of millions of pounds’ worth already stolen every year in the UK. In Hatton Garden, London’s jewellery district, dealers complain that police no longer pursue thieves and shoplifters. Today’s figures come from asking people if they have been victims of crime rather than looking at recorded crime – so it captures offences police don’t track down.

There is little to deter shoplifters today. Just 16 per cent are charged, around half the percentage charged in 2016. Meanwhile, jails are full and thieves either being released early or not sent to prison at all. The police are trying to switch tactics. They managed to end moped crime by letting officers ram those being driven by offenders, even if the driver wasn’t wearing a helmet (taking a helmet off had previously been a way of escaping). This year, undercover police with specialist knowledge of luxury watches have been used to bait thieves in central London.

Rising crime is a concern. But crime levels remain at generally historic lows, an achievement for which the Tories seem to have been able to take no credit at all.