95% of burglaries and robberies go unsolved

Number of suspects caught and punished has
halved in five years

One-Minute Read

The Metropolitan police has admitted it solved just 4% of all
domestic burglaries in the capital in the year to April, while
official police figures reveal the proportion of suspects who are
caught and punished for all crimes has halved over the past five
years to just 9%.

The Sunday Times, which mapped every neighbourhood in England and
Wales to provide a snapshot of the 4.7m crimes committed in 2017,
found that just 3% of burglaries were solved last year – less than
half the rate solved five years ago

The paper says the decline in detection rates “will raise
concerns police are struggling to protect the public, with the
number of officers in England and Wales at the lowest level since the late 1980s”. 

The statistics will also “add to concerns about the surge of
violent crime in the UK, particularly in London”, says The Daily Mail, where scores of violent attacks
and muggings have been reported, many of them involving mopeds and knives.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid revealed he recently fell victim to
thieves on a moped who stole his phone, “while, earlier this month,
comedian Michael McIntyre was robbed of his watch by moped-riding
crooks in a violent incident”, reports the London Evening Standard.