Almost a third of drivers deem car theft to have been effectively “decriminalised”, as the number of car thefts has almost doubled in the past decade, despite an incredibly low conviction rate.
New figures, courtesy of tech firm Nextbase, show that roughly 130,000 cars were stolen in the UK in the year leading up to March 2024, compared with 70,000 cars in 2014. Perhaps even more alarming is that despite the high number of thefts, only two per cent of cases resulted in anyone being charged.
This is slightly up from the 1.43 per cent charge rate that Nextbase reported between June 2022 and 2023, but it still exposes crucial failings within the UK’s police force and, many believe, their lack of commitment to combating car crime.
Read Article