Shoplifting Statistics - 1628/22

Date Responded 06 December 2022

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 the number of reports of shoplifting on your patch each month between 01/01/2022 up until the most recent date for which records exist.
Additionally, I would like to know how many arrests were made each month.
In the most recent 10 cases, I would like to know the name of the shop where the report was made.

In Response:

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.

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 by Northumbria Police.

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

With regards to data from 01/01/22 to end of July 2022 the following exemption is applicable.

As the information you have requested at these points is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.

I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means

Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

This information has been asked for previously, released and is published on the Northumbria Police Disclosure Log. FOI 1232/22 refers and the link to the Log is provided below.

With regards to the outstanding months I respond as below.

Data as of 24/11/22

Jul	691
Aug	755
Sep	774
Oct	952
Nov	696

Month	Count
Jan	30
Feb	36
Mar	43
Apr	34
May	42
Jun	28
Jul	26
Aug	37
Sep	33
Oct	38
Nov	28

Swallow Service Station

Morrisons

Premier Stores

Morrisons

Spar

Asda

Apple Green

Asda

Aldi

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

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.