Police were accused of ‘passing the buck’ on a shoplifting epidemic yesterday as shock new figures show almost 800 crimes a day are going unsolved.
Officers closed 289,464 shoplifting cases without identifying a suspect in 2024-25, up 18 per cent on the previous year when 245,337 were shelved.
On average, 793 offences a day went unsolved in the last year.
The new analysis comes after official figures revealed Britain is in the grip of a retail crime epidemic, with one theft recorded every minute for the first time in history.
Shoplifting levels have doubled since the pandemic and rocketed by 20 per cent since the Government came into power last year.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published last month showed that shoplifting hit a record high of 530,643 offences reported to police in the year to March, a 20 per cent increase on the last year’s total of 444,022.
That equates to more than 10,000 thefts a week, or 1,454 a day, which is the highest level since records began in 2003.
Now House of Commons library analysis produced for the Liberal Democrats has uncovered how police are closing more than half of cases without tracing the culprit.
Shoplifting offences are at a record high according to ONS figures
Matthew Barber, Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner
In 2024-5, 55.5% of shoplifting investigations in England and Wales failed to identify a suspect, while just 18.3 per cent resulted in a charge.
The Metropolitan Police had the worst record, with 76.9 per cent of its 93,705 shoplifting cases closed with no suspect identified and just 5.9 per cent resulting in a charge.
Dyfed-Powys Police recorded the lowest number of charges, with just 276 suspects charged or summonsed to court in 2,033 cases.
Durham Police had the highest charging rate, with 32 per cent of cases resulting in a charge.
The data covered all territorial police forces in England and Wales except Humberside.
Liberal Democrat MP Joshua Reynolds said: ‘These shameful figures show that the police are failing to crack down on the shoplifting epidemic facing our country.’
Earlier this month, Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber suggested shoppers should intervene if they spotted someone stealing.
He said they could report it to police or staff, film it on their mobile phone, shout at the thief and ‘some people will feel able to physically intervene’.
But yesterday Mr Reynolds said: ‘Senior police chiefs should be protecting us, not passing the buck to the public. It’s time for the government to scrap police and crime commissioners and invest the money in frontline policing instead.
‘That way we can get more bobbies on the beat and stop this lawlessness on our high streets.’
Retail bosses have warned that shop theft is spiralling out of control and that business owners need to see immediate results as ministers have pledged thousands more officers for neighbourhood policing by next spring.
The Mail has campaigned for police to crackdown on shoplifting, with the British Retail Consortium calculating retailers are losing £2.2billion a year, which ultimately comes out of customers’ pockets, adding around 6p to every store transaction.
Yesterday a National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesperson said: ‘Over the last two years we have made significant strides in our fight against retail crime, strengthening relationships with retailers and greatly improving information sharing which has resulted in a number of high harm offenders being brought to justice.
‘The new Retail Crime Strategy builds on this even further. It brings together policing, retailers, the security industry and academia in a shared action plan which makes best use of our collective resources to turn the tide on the volume of offending blighting our communities.
‘We are seeing much progress in police forces developing their response to retail crime, working closely with their partners to improve the safety of our communities. From prevention to dealing with offenders, we must keep working collaboratively to drive this offending out of our high streets.’
