Shoplifting (FOI ref: 1671A/24)

Request 

1. Please provide the number of reports of shoplifting submitted to West Midlands Police for the following years: 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

2. Please provide the number of reports of shoplifting that were attended to by West Midlands Police for the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

3. Please provide the number of arrests made by West Midlands Police in connection with shoplifting for the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

Response 

Our data is not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).

Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see enclosed document). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request.

1. Please provide the number of reports of shoplifting submitted to West Midlands Police for the following years: 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

3. Please provide the number of arrests made by West Midlands Police in connection with shoplifting for the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

The above is based on recorded crimes.  The above is the data for questions 1 and 3.

2. Please provide the number of reports of shoplifting that were attended to by West Midlands Police for the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 (to date).

We are unable to provide this data.

A recorded crime of shoplifting could be attended anywhere within the life cycle of the crime, and also may not be attended in some circumstances. There is no central searching tool within our recorded crime system to locate this information without having to go through all crimes individually to see if an officer attended.

In order to carry out this individual manual search would exceed the 18 hours for the purpose of the FOI Act.

Please note that this data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently, statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area. 

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data. 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be considered when those data are used.  

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material. 

Every area of the force is working hard to reduce business crime and particularly shoplifting.

Our local teams - across investigations, neighbourhood and response - work together to prevent and tackle crimes which impact on our communities. Using local officer knowledge and working with store security, we are able to identify suspects, and any emerging trends or hotspots quicker.

We routinely carry out regular high visibility patrols in retail areas, along with other activity, to trace and catch offenders.”

We work alongside numerous Business Watch schemes across the West Midlands, these are made up of representatives from local companies who come together to talk about how they can support each other to boost their trade and benefit the community and, where appropriate, work with local police and other agencies like the council and local Business Improvement District.