Property crime has fallen by
half since the mid-1990s, new data shows, as thieves increasingly move towards
targeting expensive portable items.
Vandalism, car-related theft
and burglary dropped substantially, according to the Office for National
Statistics (ONS), while lower-volume personal thefts continued to rise.
ONS says that the changing
trends are mostly down to a growing preference for targeting high-end portable
items such as MP3 players, smartphones and tablets, which are more difficult to
protect against theft.
The 2011-2012 Crime Survey for
England and Wales shows that 46 per cent of incidents involving robbery or
theft from the person involved a mobile phone - a sharp rise from just over
three out of ten in the previous year.
Younger adults were more likely
to have been victims of a personal theft than their older counterparts. For
phone theft in particular, children aged 14-17 and adults between the ages of
18 and 24 were twice as likely to have had their phones stolen than the
population as a whole.
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