Business Premises Selling Stolen Goods

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/002925/L

 Version Date: 17/03/2025

The Performance Analysis Department have provided the following information.

To obtain this data, PA searched in the Niche Crime Universe for all offences with the following SC Descriptions:

Arrange to handle stolen goods (recordable)

Attempt to handle stolen goods (recordable)

Attempt to receive stolen goods (recordable)

Conspire to receive stolen goods (recordable)

Handle stolen goods (recordable)

Handling Stolen Goods

Receiving Stolen Goods

Receiving stolen goods (recordable)

This returned 197 occurrences which were manually reviewed to see whether the suspect was selling stolen items. These were sorted by their Stats Class Status (outcome) and the calendar year in which the occurrence was reported.

Despite searching for all stolen goods offences, the only ones that pulled through were SC Descriptions:

Handle stolen goods (recordable)

Handling stolen goods

Please see this as the fully amended request......
 
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act. In order to assist you with this request, I am outlining my query as specifically as possible.
 
Under the Freedom of Information Act please can I request the following information broken down by the following calendar years: 2017, 2018, 2019 ,2020 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 

1) How many investigations have been launched into businesses for breaches of Section 22 of the Theft Act 1968. I.e. how many businesses investigated for “handling stolen goods”

Please note 2017, 2021 and 2024 were nil returns.

2) Of those how many resulted in a charge or summons.

See question 1.