Only One in Ten Burglaries Solved

Have you seen the SUN (Online) today or maybe you’ve heard about their findings on your favourite radio channel?  Not good reading!

According to the SUN and based upon data received from 30 police forces up and down England and Wales the police have only solved 10% of burglaries reported to them over the past five years. Also, of the £2 billion in goods and valuables stolen in the course of those burglaries, only 7 per cent was recovered.

In an attempt to explain why the clear-up rates are so low the SUN article points out that there are 17,000 fewer front-line officers employed than there were in 2011. They also remind us that burglary is down 71 per cent since its peak in 1995.

So why are so few burglaries cleared up?

Well, for what it’s worth here are my thoughts....

• Burglary is a crime for which there are rarely any reliable witnesses (and this was probably more so in years gone past before we had so much CCTV footage)
• Burglars have wised up to the fact that the deposit of DNA and other forensic evidence is one of the main reasons they get caught and so take greater care on the job (this higher chance of being identified has also contributed to the fall in burglary)
• Tight and reduced police budgets and new and challenging priorities (which were not there twenty years ago) have meant that resources aimed at solving burglary have been reduced

Reduced budgets mean that the police have to make difficult decisions and so it is not surprising to learn that many burglaries are ‘dealt with’ over the phone or by email and scenes go unvisited. With limited person-power they will carefully select a minority of burglaries where there is a good chance of arresting a suspect; in other words where there is strong evidence pointing to an individual or individuals. They’ll also target known hotspots for burglary and known burglars over a period of time, although this can be very costly.

I have no doubt that police forces will come back to say that actually burglary rates are way down on previous years and they’ll also advise us to take more precautions so that we don’t get burgled in the first place and you can’t argue with that.

Unfortunately, if we want our hard-pressed police to do more about burglary then something else will have to give, such as their work on knife crime, rape, child sex abuse and so on. If you want them to do more about all types of crime then you should write to your MP and ask them to convince the government to increase taxes and council rates.

Having been a police officer I know for certain that the police are just as much concerned about clear-up rates for burglary as the SUN and the rest of us, but it needs money and they don’t have as much of it as they used to have.

In conclusion I find myself saying, once again, that this finding is nothing other than a reminder to check our home security. Although there are a few exceptions homes that are targeted by the burglar are targeted because of something lacking in the security arrangements.

I will guarantee that today someone somewhere in the UK will be burgled via an open window, another via an open door, another via a letterplate (fishing) and another will lose something from the garden because they forgot to lock their side gate. It is these types of unnecessary crimes that won’t get solved and maybe even won’t get a police visit.

We have to help ourselves and reduce the burden on the police

Start by carrying out a confidential and free security survey of your home at the link below:

https://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home-security-assessment/468/home-security-survey--diy/

You know it makes sense!