Police failing to clear up three out of four crimes despite fall in offending

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.
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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’.