Just four percent of robberies in England and Wales are solved by police, with the proportion of suspects who are caught and punished for all crimes more than halving in five years.
Since 2013, the burglary detection rate has fallen from 6 percent to 3 percent, and the percentage of robberies that were solved fell from 9 percent to just 4 percent last year, The Sunday Times reports.
The paper has mapped all the neighborhoods in England and Wales to analyse the 4.7 million crimes committed in 2017 and the proportion solved, finding that in more than 1,000 areas with at least 30 crimes, police did not catch and punish a single suspect.
Home Office numbers appear to corroborate the data, showing that less than one in ten offences leads to someone being charged or sent a court summons.
In the two streets hit hardest by an epidemic of moped gang crime last year, Holloway Road and Highgate Hill in north London, there were 159 robberies. Just one offender has faced any form of justice.
In the Derbyshire Dales last year, there were 355 burglaries, and not a single burglary was solved in the local authority, the figures reveal.
The areas with the lowest rates of solved crime, where less than 5 percent of offenders were caught and punished in 2017, included Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, south Buckinghamshire, south Cambridgeshire, and Blackpool.
However, in Uttlesford in Essex, which has brought back beat police foot patrols across the area, a much stronger 26 percent of crimes were solved last year.
London’s Metropolitan Police said: “Solving crime is a key priority for the Met. Burglary presents particular challenges and we accept there is more work to be done – and are always seeking ways to increase the number of crimes we solve.”
However, figures reported in April 2018 show police across England and Wales were not even investigating two-thirds of burglaries, with many victims simply being put through to a call handler and given a crime number over the phone.
In April, a leaked government document claimed offenders could be “encouraged” by a fall in police numbers and prosecution rates.
Earlier this month, London Assembly Member Tony Arbour made a similar suggestion, asking if the reason “crime is increasing on London’s streets is the increasing belief that perpetrators will get away with it?”
Mr. Arbour made the comments after revealing that just one in ten London knife robberies was solved by police last year.