Top police chief demands 'whole system reform' to punish shoplifters

A top police chief has declared that criminal justice needs a ‘whole-system reform’ to punish the country’s soaring number of shoplifters as quickly as rioters were dealt with this summer.

Paul Sanford, Chief Constable of Norfolk Police, said any toleration of shoplifting leads to more serious criminal activity and that the recent far-right rioting shows how a fast and tough response can stop these crimes being committed.

But he warned that, on top of fixing policing, a total reform of the criminal justice system is needed in order to clamp down on shoplifters which includes addressing court backlogs, prison capacity and an under-resourced probation service.

He said: ‘We do need more whole-system reform, and what we saw in the disorder in the summer is when the sanction is swift, decisive and relevant, it cuts out criminality. In an ideal world that would be the standard and I think you’d need that sort of response to see the reductions in shoplifting that I would really like to see.’

Speaking in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme, which airs on Sunday morning at 9am, Constable Sanford praised a ‘back-to-basics’ approach to policing.

He said: ‘It’s about doing the core things well, and shoplifting is a big part of that because if you tolerate any form of crime, other crimes will follow and sometimes bigger crimes as well.

‘And we know that some of the offenders that we are apprehending for shoplifting are involved in all sorts of criminality, whether it be drug supply, whether it be street robbery, we don’t want those people in our communities, our public don’t want them floating around in our communities, and we make sure that we treat all criminality seriously.’

It comes as the number of shoplifting offences in England and Wales has risen to a new 20-year high, with a staggering 443,995 offences logged by police in the year to March 2024. This has soared 30 per cent from the 342,428 recorded in the previous year and is the highest since records began in March 2003.

And while Constable Sanford said his force in Norfolk is the best in the country at dealing with shoplifters, he explained that the entire system requires a fundamental change if they are to stop shoplifting from rising further.

Speaking to interviewer Paddy O’Connell, he said: ‘We’ve got rape victims, victims of the most serious horrendous sexual offences waiting years for trial. You can’t call that an effective and well-functioning criminal justice system.

‘Now that’s not to say that the partners in that system aren’t working their hardest to clear those backlogs. It’s a real problem for us, and I think it can only be resolved through investment, through the opening up of more courts, through the provision of more people who work in that system to drive the necessary improvements. Or we have to look at dealing with criminality in a different way.’