An online locksmithing website has conducted a study analysing data from data.police.uk, to see how many burglaries in London were closed without a suspect being identified. The research took in crime recordings from January 2016 to December 2016, per London borough.
In six boroughs, over half of burglaries were closed without identifying a suspect last year. Hammersmith and Fulham was the worst culprit, with 61 per cent of burglaries being marked as unsolved, and then closed. Second was Kingston upon Thames, with 59pc of cases closed before being solved, compared with at 53pc for Kensington and Chelsea. In contrast, the borough of Bromley saw the least amount of unsolved burglaries (36pc). Waltham Forest and Sutton were joint second at the bottom of the table with 37pc of cases closed before they could be solved. On average 45pc of burglaries were closed without ever identifying a suspect. However, this does not mean that the rest of the reported cases went to court. The study went on to find that a further 49pc remain ‘under investigation’, with little chance of finding the culprit. Adding this figure to the previous 45pc of ‘cases completed; no suspect identified’ suggests that nine in ten burglaries committed in London last year remain unsolved.
Victor Baron, Managing Director of Locksmithservice.co.uk, which did the study, said: Break-in repairs are always a difficult call-out for us. Many of the victims of burglary that we deal with are left feeling vulnerable and frustrated by the crime, with little faith that their perpetrators will be brought to justice. After this study, we realised that many more burglars were getting away with these crimes than first anticipated which is certainly a worry for many Londoners.”
The firm points out that burglary is an inherently difficult crime to solve, as without fingerprint evidence, the police have almost nothing to go on to be able to pursue the perpetrator. Visit http://www.locksmithservice.co.uk/news/worst-london-boroughs-unsolved-burglaries/.
