Government intervention reduces Metal Theft

Those of you who follow these pages may recall an item I published about Metal Theft back in 2013 – see the advice page about the same here.

In the same year the government passed the Scrap Metals Dealers Act, which amongst other things banned cash payments.

Sensibly, the government has had its interventions evaluated to see whether the decline of metal theft from 2012 was caused primarily by the government/law enforcement interventions, or was simply due to metal prices falling back from their peak. Findings show large, statistically significant effects were caused by the former, so great news again for crime prevention!

Here’s the link to the paper: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398511/horr80.pdf

Thanks to Hertfordshire Police for bringing the paper to our attention