Surge in shoplifting for food as recession hardship hits home

A police presentation to an East Riding Council committee in October showed a 20 per cent rise in shoplifting, and now latest figures from Humberside Police reveal that shoplifting in the borough has risen by more than 25 per cent since last year.

The figures will dismay hard-pressed retailers and suggest the downturn is being felt more keenly in the East Riding, as shoplifting offences fell in the force's three other divisions of Hull, North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire.

This week the force released CCTV images of a man they wanted to speak to in connection with a series of food thefts from a store in Anlaby Common.

The man was seen entering the Tesco store on two occasions and filling bags with "a large quantity of meat" from the chilled and freezer cabinets, before walking out without paying.

On a third occasion he was stopped by security staff and fled, leaving behind a bag containing 105 of fresh meat.

According to the force's figures, most shoplifting offences were committed in Hull, where there were 1,701 offences between April and October, followed by North East Lincolnshire (1,078), the East Riding (667) and North Lincolnshire (518).

Force-wide there were a total of 3,984 shoplifting offences over the period, a drop of nearly one per cent.

The minutes of the council's Safer and Stronger Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee said of the rise in shoplifting: "It was suspected that the rise in this particular crime was related to the recession, with some people resorting to stealing food because of the financial hardship individuals were experiencing."

Domestic burglary has also risen by more than eight per cent across the force, with the biggest increase coming in North Lincolnshire – a 29.2 per cent rise on last year.

The number of most serious violent crimes has also risen dramatically in the East Riding. The 35 per cent increase, with 108 offences between April and October, put the division far above its target for the year of 70 offences.

This was against a near-seven per cent fall in serious violent crime across the force.

Overall, the level of recorded crime fell across the force area by 8.6 per cent, to 46,415 offences from the 50,804 over the period last year.

Gun crime was up by 2.3 per cent to 44 offences, and serious violent knife crime rose nearly three per cent to 212 offences.

The figures show the force still has fewer members of staff than it would wish drawn from ethnic minority backgrounds, including force community support officers.

Its target for the end of the year is to have six per cent of its workforce from ethnic minorities, yet the proportion actually fell over the last year, by 1.7 per cent to 3.1 per cent.

Women make up more than 26 per cent of the workforce, a slight fall on the target, while 11 per cent of the sergeants and inspectors at the force are women, again slightly below target.

Force watchdog Humberside Police Authority has found a disparity between levels of public satisfaction in the force between two different research projects.

Only 35.1 per cent of respondents to a British Crime Survey agreed that the force could be relied on to deal with minor crime, but a local confidence survey commissioned by the police authority found that 61.1 per cent agreed.

One of the force's most successful performances has been its ability to target and confiscate criminal assets. The value of cash forfeiture and confiscation orders obtained this year was 2.13m – a meteoric rise of more than 200 per cent on the 708,899 recovered last year.

Three confiscation orders worth about 500,000 were obtained in recent months.