The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) has published a report highlighting how police forces in England and Wales are cracking down on retail crime.
Katy Bourne, APCC lead for retail and business crime and PCC for Sussex, said there was “still more work to do” and it was “now, more than ever, that policing needs to work effectively with businesses to tackle this deluge of shop thefts, assaults and criminality”.
According to the report, PCCs are adopting a wide range of techniques and approaches, such as implementing new education programmes to reduce the rate of crime and changing how police forces respond to calls and incidences.
Several police forces have also introduced new technology to tackle crime and identify offenders. Sussex Police, for example, has led a pilot of the time-saving solution One Touch Reporting with the Co-op and National Business Crime Solution.
This takes incident reports straight from the Co-op’s My Safety system using a bespoke API directly into the force’s Niche Crime Recording application, reducing the time to report down from 30 minutes to around 90 seconds per crime.
Work is ongoing to scale up this approach by Sussex Police, following “national interest” in adopting it, the report said.
A number of forces are also using an online data-sharing platform that allows retailers to report and access information about crime such as shoplifting and antisocial behaviour, called Disc, including Thames Valley, Merseyside and Derbyshire.
Warwickshire Police said Disc had helped to give lengthier custodial sentences of between 20 and 40 weeks due to additional evidence of offending identified through the Disc data.
The Association of Convenience Stores has welcomed the report.
“We strongly welcome the focus on retail crime in this report, highlighting the work PCCs are doing across England and Wales to make a difference on retail crime,” said CEO James Lowman. “We’ve been pushing for action to support retailers in reporting and tackling crime for several years, so it is encouraging to see progress being made in this area.”
The publication of the report follows the introduction of the Retail Crime Action Plan in 2023, which establishes how police officers should respond to shop theft and violent incidents in stores. All police forces have signed up to the plan.
Lowman added: “Implementing the Retail Crime Action Plan is a strong start, but we need to ensure that barriers to reporting are removed and prolific offenders are identified quickly so they can be apprehended by the police and the full extent of their crimes accounted for.”
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