A police force headed by a chief constable with a “back to basics” philosophy is the best at bringing shoplifters to justice, figures show.
Humberside is the best-performing force in England and Wales for catching and prosecuting shoplifters, with a charging rate more than four times that of the bottom-ranked Metropolitan Police.
Some 31.1 per cent of shop thefts in Humberside result in a charge. A further 12 per cent lead to cautions, penalty notices or other sanctions. That compares with a charge rate of just 7.1 per cent at the Met.
Chris Todd, the chief constable of Humberside, said the force’s success could be attributed to investigating every crime, having no minimum cash threshold for screening out thefts, and getting officers to stores within 15 minutes.
“We pride ourselves on the fact that when people call us, we answer 999s in three seconds. We answer 101s in seven seconds. If you call us, we’ll pick up and if you need us, we’ll get there,” he said.
“So that puts us in a position where we’re more likely to succeed from the outset, regardless of the crime type. Every call for service is valued. Every crime has to be investigated, we don’t triage stuff out, and we deal with it.”
Mr Todd added that equal value is placed on neighbourhood policing in the true old-fashioned sense where local officers are expected to know everyone in their communities.
“The offenders will more likely than not be known to our neighbourhood teams because they are proactive in the neighbourhood, day in and day out,” he said.
“So we can just look at the CCTV in the store and more often than not, we can identify the offender quite quickly and get to them. And we do.”
Despite the plethora of digital clues from smart phones and video doorbells transforming police investigation, Mr Todd said “the basics” of policing remain the same. “The better we can do that, the more effective we’ll be,” he said.
This includes specialist teams using intelligence-led policing to target the increasing number of organised crime gangs profiting from shoplifting.
Mr Todd is also targeting retailers who are not taking action against thieves. One shop, Mr Todd said, was part of a chain, and had become a magnet for shoplifters because it was failing to take simple precautions such as moving items away from doors or putting security measures in place.
The store changed its tune, however, after the force, working with the local authority, started legal action to remove its licence to sell alcohol. “We’ve seen the rate of offending in that particular store reduced dramatically since we took that approach,” said Mr Todd.
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A similar no-nonsense approach has reaped dividends across the board with the force’s overall crime rate down by 3.7 per cent in a year, double the national rate.
“We’ve seen theft go down. We’ve seen burglary go down, violence go down, stalking and harassment go down. Public disorder has gone down as well,” the chief constable said.
The only crimes that have increased are drugs, up 45 per cent, and firearms. Mr Todd says the reason for the spike in these areas is not due to laxity but rigour, and attributable to the force’s proactive stop and search policy.
The chief constable – who has served in Hong Kong, West Midlands police, the National Crime Agency and Northern Ireland – is keen to point out that the force’s focus on shoplifting is no kneejerk response to the record surge in the crime.
“We haven’t just turned the tap on recently. We’ve been doing this for a while because it’s the right thing to do, but you have to be adequately resourced,” he said.
Overall, for the 43 forces in England and Wales, the detection rate has started to turn upwards, from 17.9 per cent of shoplifting offences resulting in a charge to 20.1 per cent in the year to last September. Shoplifting offences also fell in the last quarter, from 530,509 in the year to June 2025 to 519,381 in the year to September.
However, detection is still a long way down from2015, when 35.8 per cent of all shoplifting offences across England and Wales resulted in a charge.
Mr Todd believes that better use of technology will play a key part in improving detection through, for example, retailers sending evidence directly to police. However, that will not mean ignoring the basics.
“Policing is always going to be a human endeavour, so the quicker we can make our people available, the better chance we have whatever the crime type is,” he said.
