95% of burglaries and robberies go unsolved

Less than 5% of burglaries and street robberies result in convictions, according to new data revealing a crisis in British policing.

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

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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.