Shoplifting offences (FOI ref: 1178/26)

Request

I would be interested in any information held by your organisation regarding my request. If you need further clarification, please contact me by email.

Please provide the following: 

1. The top 5 individuals with the highest number of recorded shoplifting offences (Home Office classification:) within your police force area for the calendar years 2023, 2024 and 2025
2. For each individual, please provide:

- Number of recorded shoplifting offences attributed to them

- Number of those offences resulting in:

1. a) charge/summons
2. b) caution
3. c) no further action

Please anonymise individuals by assigning a unique identifier (e.g. Offender A, Offender B).

For your help shoplifting has the Home Office Code 046/00 and designates Theft from shops and stalls, commonly referred to as shoplifting. I am asking for people convicted of offen

If my request is denied in whole or in part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specify exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all non-exempt material. 

Clarification

We clarified with you that “I am asking for people convicted of offen” was to be removed.

We also clarified with you that your request for the top 5 individuals was as a top 5 list for each calendar year, rather than a top 5 list covering the three-year time period.

Response

Please find the requested information below.

The nominal details provided have been anonymised by assigning a corresponding numerical ranking based on their number of shoplifting offences in the given year.

As such, there may or may not be a direct link between rank 1 in 2023 and rank 1 in 2024 for example. As the results are entirely anonymised, no correlation between the year-on-year ranking should be inferred.

We fully understand the impact and frustration of shop thefts on businesses of all sizes, it's a crime which can affect livelihoods. Our teams across investigations, neighbourhood and response work closely 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.

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 taken into account 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 taken into account 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.