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The number of shoplifters being caged has surged and they’re going behind bars for longer, an exclusive Daily Star Sunday investigation has revealed. The fightback against Britain’s shoplifting epidemic was uncovered following a series of Freedom of Information requests by the Reach Data Unit. Our investigators discovered there were a whopping 44,300 convictions for theft-related crimes from shops in the year ending June 2025. That’s ratcheted up from 35,300 a year earlier and is nearly as high as the 44,700 convictions in the year ending June 2018. The percentage of those being jailed is also rising. In 2018 a total of 25 per cent of those convicted for shoplifting were sent to jail compared to 27 per cent in the year ending June 2025 as shops resort to putting tags on bizarre items such as fish . That equates to just over 12,000 custodial sentences being handed out for thefts from shops in the last year – compared to around 9,800 in 2024, and 6,300 in 2023. The amount of time pilferers are spending behind bars is also increasing with the average custodial sentence for thefts from shops shooting up to 2.4 months in the year ending June. That’s increased from 2.2 months in 2024, and 1.9 months back in 2018. Shoplifters in Surrey got the harshest sentences with the average jail term hitting 5.7 months in the last year to June 2025. In Dorset, the average was 4.8 months, in Gloucestershire it was 3.4 months, and in Sussex it was 3.3 months. London saw more shoplifters jailed than anywhere else in the country with a total of 3,511 custodial sentences handed out for thefts from shops in the capital over the last five years. West Yorkshire has had the next most (2,579), followed by the West Midlands (2,345) and Greater Manchester (1,880). Outside the large urban areas, Cleveland - which covers Middlesbrough and Teesside - has the highest rate of shoplifting convictions. There was a total of 1,018 custodial sentences handed out for shoplifting in the Cleveland police force area in the last five years. That works out as 170 for every 100,000 people living in the area. Shoplifters in South Wales are most likely to find themselves in prison. Some 39 per cent of those convicted were given an immediate custodial sentence in the year ending June 2025. Recent months have seen a series of notorious shoplifters sent to jail. Romanian mum of three, Bianca Mirica, carried out 30 thefts between December 2023 and May 2024 stealing around £300,000 worth of perfumes and cosmetics from Boots stores across London. The 20-year-old, who moved to the UK around five years ago and has three previous convictions was jailed for 32 months in August. Similarly, prolific shoplifter, Liam Hutchinson, 31, was jailed for 12 months in September after he was convicted of stealing more than £100,000 worth of goods from Boots stores across west London. And last month repeat offender Mark Stavrou, 33, was jailed for three years after he targeted a petrol station and supermarket more than 100 times, brazenly helping himself to an array of goods. In recent months, the Daily Star Sunday has documented the extent of the shoplifting epidemic afflicting retailers. Last month we told how Boots is locking down advent calendars with alarm tags in a bid to beat shoplifters. While in July we told how TG Jones was protecting supplies of Cluedo with enhanced security measures after the classic board game was targeted for thefts. And in April we told how anti-theft tags were being fitted to packs of Yorkshire Tea after the iconic brew was targeted by crooks at Sainsbury’s Local and Tesco Express stores. This year the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported the total cost of customer hit £2.2 billion in 2023/24. There were over 20million incidents of theft - 55,000 per day - up from 16m the previous year. Last night campaigners welcomed our findings but stressed more needed to be done to tackle the shoplifting epidemic. Emmeline Taylor, professor of criminology at City, University of London said: “These figures lay bare the scale of the challenge. We’re seeing record numbers of people sent to prison for shop theft, yet the underlying drivers of offending remain stubbornly unchanged. “If we’re serious about reducing acquisitive crime, we need a dual strategy: focused disruption of the organised criminal networks behind most bulk thefts, alongside credible community interventions that tackle the root causes of repeat offending, particularly drug addiction. A short custodial sentence - averaging just 2.4 months, and in practice only a few weeks behind bars once early guilty pleas and automatic release are applied – does little to address addiction or poverty. “For many of these individuals, prison is a revolving door that fails to break the cycle of crime – and it comes at great expense to the taxpayer. These offenders need rehabilitation which is not only cheaper to the public purse but more effective. “For those organised criminal elements, OPAL (the national intelligence unit focused on serious organised acquisitive crime) is having some great successes in identifying the offenders and bringing them to justice. Retail crime isn’t victimless. It harms businesses, staff, and communities. "Unless enforcement is paired with meaningful support and prevention, we’ll keep seeing the same individuals cycling through the system.” Lucy Whing, Business & Regulation Policy Advisor at the BRC, said: “Retail theft is a major issue for retailers, costing over £2.2bn a year and acting as a major trigger for violence and abuse against staff. “While the causes are manifold, the rise in organised crime is a significant concern, with gangs hitting stores one after another. Sadly, such theft is not a victimless crime; it pushes up the cost for honest shoppers and damages the customer experience. “We are glad to see that this is being taken seriously as this will help to turn the tide on rising crime.” David Spencer, Head of Crime and Justice Policy Exchange and former Detective Chief Inspector Metropolitan Police, said: “Too many of the ‘soft on criminals progressives’ believe shoplifters are something we should all just have to put up with. “Their crimes lead to higher prices, an increased cost of living and the law-abiding public feeling like they get a worse deal than criminals. As Policy Exchange has highlighted, at a time of increasingly sophisticated CCTV and facial recognition systems there is no excuse for the police and prosecutors failing to catch and prosecute more of these criminals.” For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters .
