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Police are solving only one in every four crimes, meaning some 3.1million offenders were able to cheat justice last year.

Despite an overall fall in recorded crime, Home Office figures revealed poorer detection rates for every category of offence.

Only 1.2million of the 4.3million cases handled by the police were cleared up.

And the picture could become even worse, with experts warning that up to 60,000 police staff will be axed because of budget cuts.

The biggest decreases were recorded in fraud and forgery, violence, sex crimes and some kinds of theft.

For burglary, the detection rate fell below 13 per cent – the equivalent of one in every eight offences.

This happened despite sharp falls in both police recorded crime and offences documented in the British Crime Survey – a study of 40,000 homes which includes incidents not reported to the authorities.

In 2009-10, the number of BCS crimes fell to 9.6million. This is nine per cent below the previous year, and the lowest level since records began in 1981.

Officials said it had dispelled fears of the recession-fuelled crimewave predicted by ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in a notorious leaked memo.

The number of crimes recorded by police forces across England and Wales fell by 8 per cent, to 4.3million.

Yet the overall detection rate fell to 27.8 per cent, compared with 28.4 per cent in the previous year.

Almost all drug offences – 94 per cent – are detected, mainly because it is relatively straightforward to clear up a case of cannabis possession, the most common crime.

If drug offences are stripped out of the overall detection rate, the number of crimes solved falls to 24 per cent. Officers blame the figure on excessive bureaucracy and paperwork.

Police welcomed the falls in crime. Downing Street said the figures were ‘clearly down’, but that they were ’still too high’.

Sexual offences recorded by the police in 2009-10 totalled 54,509 – a 6 per cent increase on the previous year. But officials said police had been taking steps to enhance the recording of serious sex attacks.

Sharp rises in BCS woundings, robberies and muggings were dismissed as ‘not being significant’ because they were based on a small number of victim interviews.

It came as a report by an ex-chief constable and finance expert warned funding cuts could lead to the loss of up to 60,000 police officers and staff by 2015. Tim Brain, ex-head of Gloucestershire Police, said the figure represents the worst-case scenario after the Treasury told departments to prepare for cuts of 40 per cent.

Dr Brain, now Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Cardiff University, said that if the cuts were 25 per cent, the job losses would be between 11,500 and 17,000.

He warned: ‘This will mean fewer personnel for patrol, response and investigation duties.’

Dr Brain, who produced the report for Police Review magazine, said he expects the bulk of cuts to come through nonreplacement of police officers who retire and redundancies among civilian staff. Police cannot be made redundant.

Home Office chief statistician David Blunt said that, under the BCS measure, there were 6.5million fewer victims of crime in 2009/10 than in 1995.

He said the property crime results, with domestic burglaries down by 9 per cent and vehicle crime down by 17 per cent , were ‘ surprising’ . Improved security measures, including alarms and better locks as well as vehicle immobilisers are responsible for the falls, officials believe.

He said the trend of falling property crime has been seen in other developed countries.

Home Secretary Theresa May warned the figures offer only a ‘partial picture’, with anti-social behaviour and even murder excluded from the British Crime Survey.

She described the projected cuts in police numbers as ‘entirely speculative’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1294902/Police-failing-clear-3-4-crimes-despite-fall-offending.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0u7SRNEKi

Source: Guardian, Date: 15 July 2010

The unexpected fall in the crime rate in the past year despite the deepest recession in the postwar era may be because crime is what economists could call an “old lagging indicator”.

As the justice secretary and former chancellor, Ken Clarke, suggested earlier this week, no one can prove cause and effect but he correctly pointed out that the fall in crime rates since 1995 had mainly been during periods of economic growth with strong employment levels and rising living standards.

Home Office criminologists were surprised that the predicted rise in property crime – mainly stealing from cars and burglaries – has not materialised since the onset of the recession.

They suggested that this could be because home and vehicle security is much better than during the previous recession of the early 1990s. All new cars have immobilisers and homes without basic window locks and security alarms are six times more likely to be burgled.

There may be some truth in this improving security argument but more powerful is likely to be the delayed rise in the unemployment rate. It is in this sense that crime is a “lagging” indicator that tends to follow a rise in joblessness.

As the public spending crunch leads to predictions of an extra million jobs disappearing in the next four years, it will be a miracle if Tory ministers can go into the next election able to boast about a fall in crime during their period in office.

Against this background, record prison numbers, record numbers of police officers, greater use of CCTV, a global fall in crime in developed countries and even a decline in the real value of many household items are all alleged to be behind the long-term fall in crime in England and Wales.

The Home Office noted them all but refused to commit itself to a single definitive explanation, describing them instead as “competing hypotheses”. One of the “more speculative alternatives” cited is the idea that car crime is a “debut offence” for offenders and the improved security has put off many a potential career criminal.

But it is the question of a link between the record prison population of 85,000 and the fall in the crime rate that is one of the most politically charged questions. The massive US jail population is said by some to be the reason crime has been falling there since 1988, while Canada has had a falling prison population and a falling crime rate.

Classic British criminology says there is an “incarceration effect” but it is small. It takes a rise of 25% in the prison population to cut the crime rate by 1% or 2%. On this basis it is likely that the 100% rise in prison numbers since 1992 is probably responsible for about 5% to 6% of the 50% fall in crime since the 1990s.

Source: CNET News, Date: 13 April 2010

In the week in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said his company is now “paranoid” about security (not an advert for Chrome at all), a lone milkman in the UK has expressed a paranoia that seems to have been dismissed by the great search engine in the sky (and on the ground).

Gordon Rayner is a 54-year-old man without a mountain bike.

He used to have a mountain bike, but, according to the Telegraph, Rayner says Google’s infinitely discreet Street View cameras published a picture of it to the world–which includes the underworld. The cameras happened upon his house, you see, while his garage door was open.

“When you look at the photograph, my face is blacked out, the windows of my house are blacked out but because the garage door was left open, you can clearly see everything in there,” he told the Telegraph.

The bike was stolen last month and thieves then made a return visit just to see if there was anything more they could take, but somehow didn’t manage to get back into the garage. “It is just an invitation for any criminal to take what they like,” Rayner told the Telegraph.

Google reportedly said that there has been no increase in crime since their cameras began to record the world’s innards. And one wonders whether criminals really have ceased to skip casing joints and turned to merely smoking them while scanning Street View looking for open garage doors. Somehow, I doubt it.

Source: BBC News, Date: 24 January 2010

Police have issued an urgent appeal for information after powerful medicine and bullets were stolen in a house burglary in north Wales.

They said the break-in happened at the home of an RSPCA worker in Llangernyw, Abergele, Conwy on Saturday.

As well as personal items like bank cards, a metal box containing two glass bottles of the medicine Pentbarbitone Sodium and bullets was stolen.

Officers said they are concerned where these items are.

The robbery took place sometime between 1230 GMT and 1830 GMT on Saturday.

North Wales Police said anyone who witnessed any suspicious vehicles or suspicious behaviour in the Llangernyw area should come forward.

Anyone with information should contact officers at St Asaph on 101, or 0845 607 1001 (Welsh line) or 0-845 607 1002 (English line), or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Home Security and Burglary Prevention starts with understanding basic layers of protection and prevention. While a sticker or a sign isn’t “secure”, it is a deterrent and creates doubt in the mind of the burglar. There are a number of creative measures you can take to protect your home and family. www.abbeylocks.co.uk

In this episode Jes cons a Locksmith into opening a locked door to someone Else’s house and walks out with over £4000 of stolen property.

Abbey Locks and Security always insist on seeing photo ID with proof of address (driving licence or passport!) before any entry is gained. If customers do not have ID on them at the time, they will be required to provide it once we have gained entry, failure to do this will mean the Police will be notified. We  recommend that you always shred any personal documents that can be used for ID theft by fraudsters. This sort of crime is unfortunately on the increase from our experience. For information how to better secure your property and security advice please call us or e-mail. Our surveys are free of charge.

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Source: Latest Gadgets, Date: 16 December 2009

Berkeley Varitronics Systems is going to launch a hand-held cell phone detector known as the Bloodhound. The device is able to perform

Bloodhound

 various functions such as scanning real-time for unauthorized cell phone activity penitentiary facilities, it is able to identify the exact location of the person who is calling.

Nowadays the problem of contraband cell phones really exists. It is note an easy task to detect the location as well as confiscate contraband cell phones even if monitoring sensors, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and drug and bomb dogs will at hand. Moreover, cell phone jamming is not so helpful in this very problem, for that reason the Bloodhound cell phone detector was created.

It is very beneficial as it can identify a cell phone within a correctional facility the device does not have to intervene in citizens’ or public safety communications.

The Bloodhound was created to trace and locate contraband cell phones. It involved a high speed scanning multi-band receiver harnessed to a DF-Direction Finding Antenna that lets security officers to detect the RF energy. The device has a special algorithm that is able to trigger on to a cell phone if it is active.

It also has such feature as headphone jack with a progressive audible alert tone and an accompanying vibrator that help notify security officers of cell phone activity.

Source: Morning Star, Date: 30 December 2009

The rapid growth in mobile phone use in prisons is as dangerous as giving inmates firearms and puts prisoners, the public and prison staff in danger, the Prison Officers Association (POA) has warned.

The union blamed government “penny pinching” and a lack of will by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) for an astonishing 350 per cent rise in the number of phones and SIM cards confiscated in prisons since 2006.

Of the 8,099 items confiscated in 2008, 388 were found in high-security prisons – nearly double the number found two years ago.

And the provision of mobile phones in prisons has become a highly lucrative industry in its own right with inmates reportedly paying thousands to borrow a device.

Tory security spokeswoman Baroness Neville-Jones seized the opportunity to stoke fears that mobile phones in prisons are facilitating terrorist activity.

She said: “In 2007 a convicted al-Qaida supporter was caught using a mobile phone to build a website from inside a high-security prison.

“You would have thought that the authorities would have got their act together after that, yet there are now more mobile phones found in high-security prisons than there were then.

“This spreads extremist ideology and is a threat to our security.”

But Justice Secretary Jack Straw hit back and accused the Tories of “cheap propaganda” to grab headlines.

“Instead, the Tories need to say which bits of our strategy they disagree with, what more they would do and how they would fund any extra measures as a result,” he said.

But the POA said a simple solution has been available for some time in mobile phone jamming equipment.

The “jammers” have drawn strong resistance by mobile phone networks which claim the technology would hinder their service, even though they have been successfully adopted in several countries including France.

POA national secretary Colin Moses urged the government to stop “penny pinching” and move immediately to eradicate mobile phones from prisons.

He said: “Mobile phones in prison are as dangerous as firearms.

“And the reduction in search policies is a cost-cutting exercise by NOMS which puts everyone in danger.

“Mobile phones could be blocked with the correct investment and with a tightening of searching in and out of prisons.”

Source: Prison Planet, Date: 8 January 2010

Naked body scanners are being readied to go mobile and scan you on the street, at football games and any other event where masses of people are congregated, according to a leaked paper written by Dutch authorities.

As we have been warning all along, the tyranny now being metered out at airports was always intended to be rolled out onto the streets, with mobile metal detectors already being stationed at various transport hubs in the UK in the name of stopping knife crime.

Now Dutch police have announced that they are developing a mobile scanner that will “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons”.

According to a confidential document, “The scanner could first be used as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas. The mobile detector would enable the search to be carried out more quickly and would only be used on people suspected of carrying concealed weapons,” reports Dutch News.nl.

The device would also be used from a distance on groups of people “and mass scans on crowds at events such as football matches.”

“The biggest challenge is making it portable and ensuring it can carry out a scan in seconds,” Giampiero Gerini, a professor at Eindhoven University, told the paper.

The aim is to develop and deploy the device within three years. With police in major American and British cities already carrying out random searches of innocent people under routinely abused terrorism laws, mobile scanners are likely to be added to their arsenal, especially if people have been trained to accept their use as routine in airports.

Three years ago, leaked documents out of the Home Office revealed that authorities in the UK were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.

“The questions are when is this a useful addition to security and when does it become unduly intrusive and worrying to the public?” said Professor Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert.

Since everything that we see being installed at the airports is now gradually being introduced on the streets, how long will it be before mind-reading devices that scan individuals for behavioral psychology, now being discussed for use in airports, are stationed on every major street corner?

The technologies now being prepared not just for the airport, but for our everyday lives, are far more frightening and technologically advanced than anything George Orwell wrote about in 1984. Unless we stand up in unison and say enough is enough, our world will become a literal hi-tech prison grid characterized by a caste system of slaves and controllers.