The rate of shoplifting in England and Wales has hit its highest level for more than two decades after rising by nearly a third in a year, the latest crime figures show.
Data from the Office for National Statistics revealed there were 402,482 shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales in the 12 months up to September 2023, the first time the number has exceeded 400,000 since records began in 2002.
The figures illustrate the increasing problem many retailers face with theft from their shops, with the British Retail Consortium estimating that retail crime cost businesses £1.7bn last year.
The number of incidents was up 32% compared with the 304,459 in the previous 12 months and surpassed the previous high of 382,642 incidents in 2018.
The uptick in shoplifting has led to some supermarkets security-tagging products such as baby formula, butter and cheese, or drastically reducing the number of display items on shelves.
The cost of living crisis is widely acknowledged as one of the biggest driving forces in the growing number of incidents, as household spending becomes squeezed. Shops have said an increase in the number of organised criminal gangs targeting stores is also fuelling the problem.
In October, Sharon White, the chair of the John Lewis department store group, which also owns the supermarket chain Waitrose, said some organised gangs were “shoplifting to order” and targeting expensive items such as wines and spirits.
Retailers say many cases are going unpunished, with Co-op Food revealing in September that police attended about two in 10 of the incidents its workers reported.
To combat the growing problem, the government launched an action plan last October including measures such as the creation of a specialist team to target organised criminals behind targeted incidents, and pledges from police to prioritise responding to incidents where shop workers are attacked or where a security guard has detained an offender.
But in the same month, the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, set out measures for criminals facing jail sentences of under 12 months to receive suspended sentences and community service, with shoplifters one of the groups of offenders expected to benefit most from the change.
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The overall number of crimes recorded by police in England and Wales in the year to September 2023 stood at 6.7m, up 1% from 6.6m in the previous year and higher than 6.1m in the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20.
Catherine Grant, of the ONS, said there was a “mixed picture of crime” but that police-recorded crime was showing “notable increases in some theft offences, including shoplifting” as well as a rise in thefts of motor vehicles.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We’d always want to do more to combat shoplifting. I think there is work that has been done, particularly with private companies, about how we can go further to tackle this issue.”
