Mobile Phone Thefts in Newcastle - 334/20

Date Responded 10 March 2020

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

I would like to know how many mobile phones have been stolen in Newcastle city centre in the past 3 years? And which month and year has had the most reported cases?
What is the ratio of reported cases of phone theft versus those who have been caught and punished for this specific offence?

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

The following should be noted with regards to the information provided below:

As a specific date period has not been requested, this data has been run for the past three years exactly. This pertains to the period 26/02/2017 through to 25/02/2020.
"Theft of a mobile phone" is not an offence in its own right. As such, this has been defined as a theft, robbery or burglary wherein the item taken was a mobile phone. Should one such instance relate to multiple mobile phones being taken, they have been counted individually.
"Caught and punished" has been defined as the initial theft having a final disposal of a charge or summons.
"Newcastle City Centre" has been defined as within the Newcastle Central area code on the force system.
Regarding the ratio – this is not recorded and we are not obliged to create data in order to provide a response to a Freedom of Information request - as such the base data has been provided.

The most prolific month was November 2017 with 188 total reported thefts, and the most prolific year was 2017 also with a total of 1246 reported thefts.

2017	Mobile Phones Stolen	Charged/Summonsed
Feb	0	0
Mar	14	4
Apr	120	8
May	114	6
Jun	78	4
Jul	114	2
Aug	168	2
Sep	114	4
Oct	158	0
Nov	188	70
Dec	178	4
Total	1246	104
2018
Jan	156	20
Feb	130	8
Mar	147	12
Apr	53	2
May	74	1
Jun	63	3
Jul	53	0
Aug	47	0
Sep	44	0
Oct	98	0
Nov	58	0
Dec	103	4
Total	1026	50
2019
Jan	85	0
Feb	78	1
Mar	91	18
Apr	57	7
May	59	2
Jun	52	2
Jul	61	8
Aug	48	5
Sep	67	3
Oct	71	0
Nov	50	2
Dec	55	5
Total	774	53
2020
Jan	47	0
Feb	105	2
Total	152	2

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.