Families living in fear as this country suffers a burglary blitz

THE SUNDAY POST is today launching a campaign to get the police to take the scourge of housebreaking more seriously.

In the coming weeks and months we will reveal the devastating impact a break-in can have on the lives of hard-working families, the elderly and vulnerable, as well as exposing how little is done about the crime.

Pitifully low clear-up rates give the public little confidence the issue is a priority for police and the “Safe In Our Houses” campaign will lay bare the holes in the fight against housebreaking by criminals who know they have little chance of getting caught and going to jail.

In the first of our hard-hitting series of investigations we lay bare the true extent of the housebreaking epidemic that’s taken hold in Britian.

We also speak to families affected by the sickening crime.

DOZENS of properties are ransacked each day in a housebreaking blitz, a landmark Sunday Post probe has found.

Every 26 minutes thieves break into homes and steal the owners’ most treasured possession peace of mind.

Our investigation reveals how burglary has reached epidemic levels, but there’s very little prospect of the victims ever getting their belongings back, or action being taken against the culprits.

In some areas, four in five housebreakers escape unpunished and the problem comes as Police Scotland pumps its resources into other areas such as motoring offences, with a surge in people being fined for speeding or failing to update driving licences since the new force was created.

Today The Sunday Post calls for a crackdown on the crime.

Our call comes on the on the back of an investigation which shows

There are 56 domestic break-ins every day, but on average just 14 are solved.

As many as 13,000 break-ins a year go unreported, suggesting the problem could be far bigger.

The number of people approaching Victim Support for help in the wake of a robbery has doubled in the last three years.

The rate of convictions has almost halved since 2008 with only 55% of the 1,000 thieves found guilty of housebreaking last year ending up behind bars.

A postcode lottery for detection rates has emerged with police in the Highlands more than twice as likely to catch housebreakers than their counterparts in Inverclyde.

Just 18% of housebreaking cases in Glasgow are solved.

Housebreaking clear-up rates are among the worst of any crime reported to Police Scotland.

Scottish Tory MSP Margaret Mitchell said: “Having your property broken into is one of the most disturbing things that can happen.

“But it is clearly well down the list of priorities for Police Scotland.

“Neither Police Scotland nor the Scottish Government are doing enough to tackle this problem.”

The number of housebreakings in Scotland in 2014/15 was 20,607 which works out as 56 a day or 2.3 an hour one every 26 minutes.

Official figures show the national clear-up rate for housebreaking stands at just 25% and the rate has stubbornly stuck around this level for more than a decade.

This contrasts with a swathe of other crimes, such as drugs offences or breach of the peace, where clear up rates are or close to 100%.

Even often difficult crimes to investigate, such as rape, have clear up rates of around 75%.

Force insiders told The Sunday Post the merger of the regional forces saw tackling housebreaking drop down the agenda, while other issues such as domestic abuse got a higher priority.

One senior figure said: “There is no question that housebreaking has fallen down the pecking order.

“It’s not as if someone said stop investigating this crime, it’s just money has been diverted elsewhere.

“This is borne out in the figures. It is a crime which has a huge personal impact yet is not properly resourced.”

Using Freedom of Information laws, our reporters obtained a breakdown of housebreakings and police clear-up rates by council ward for 2014/15.

This allowed us to work out which areas suffer most from break-ins.

Edinburgh has been Scotland’s housebreaking hot spot in recent years and this is borne out with the fact that 11 of the 20 worst areas in the country for the crime are in the capital.

There is a postcode lottery when it comes to the chances of officers finding the culprits who broke into people’s home.

Detection rates vary wildly from 39% of housebreakings cleared up in the Highlands, compared to just 15% in Inverclyde.

Many areas, such as Glasgow and Renfrewshire, have had long-standing low rates of detection, with just one in five break-ins solved.

In Dumfries & Galloway, the detection rate has fallen from 61% in 210/11 to 36% in 2014/15.

Scottish Labour’s Hugh Henry said: “These figures are shocking.

“It’s time for the police and SNP Ministers to take this issue seriously again. People should be able to go home without worrying about someone breaking in.”

Figures provided by Victim Support Scotland show a huge rise in the number of people seeking help after suffering a break-in.

The charity was contacted by 5,544 people as a result of a break-in in 2011/12, but this had more than doubled to 11,567 in 2013/14.

It said the majority of the referrals came from the police but many people refer themselves, sometimes having not reported the crime.

Our analysis has also raised concerns a true picture of the problem might be masked by the fact that many people don’t report when they have been a victim.

In 2012/13 there were 21,515 recorded house robberies.

However, the Crime and justice survey for the same year, which interviewed 12,000 households a, estimated the number of housebreakings at 34,745 up from 25,485 in 2008/09.

The 13,230 gap suggests many families are not reporting robberies, perhaps reflecting the low clear-up rates across the country.

The survey also reveals that in 2012/13 just 64% of people reported they had been the victim of a break-in. In the 1992 poll it was 77%.

Figures show how few people caught breaking into people’s homes end up behind bars.

For every 39 recorded house break-ins, just one person is jailed.

In 2013/14 there were a total of 22,272 robberies but only 1,034 convictions.

The rate of convictions has almost halved in just seven years.

In 2007/08 the number of people with a proven charge for house breaking was 1,867 but by 2013/14 it had fallen to 1,034.

Of the 1,034, 55% were jailed, 31% were handed a community sentence, 6% were handed a fine and the rest had another disposal at the hands of the courts.

The average fine was just £317.

Police Scotland has come under fire for a targets culture which it denies exists but there has still been a big spike in people being stopped for “low level” crimes.

The number of drivers caught speeding increased by 37% in the first nine months of Police Scotland’s existence compared with the same period the previous year, while there was a 400% hike in the number of motorists caught with an old address on their driving licence over the last year.

Assistant Chief Constable Kate Thomson said:. “All complaints relating to such crimes are given priority, investigated thoroughly and professionally in an effort to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.

“Dedicated resources have been assigned to areas particularly affected by break-ins and thefts..

“In the year 2014/15, housebreakings reported fell by 1.9% to 28,843, while the detection rate rose 1.8% year on year to 25%.

“In the same period, 83.4% of people who reported an incident said they were very satisfied with the way their issue was dealt with.

“Housebreaking offences are continually monitored throughout Scotland, and extra support can be provided to any area requiring a more robust response to tackle this issue.

“This robust approach sends a clear message to local residents as to how seriously Police Scotland is addressing their concerns.”

CASE STUDY 1

IT was when she found her nine-year-old son Sam’s pocket money jar lying empty that Gwen Hamilton began to cry.

The old jam jar was on the floor amid the debris of his ransacked room the note in which he’d meticulously kept count of

his precious pennies scrunched up and tossed aside.

“It was seeing that which broke me,” she says.

“I couldn’t believe we’d been robbed and I couldn’t believe they’d take a wee boy’s pocket money.”

Just minutes before, she and her 12-year-old daughter Lauryn had returned home to Edinburgh’s Buckstone suburb after a couple of hours out.

On opening the front door of their three-bedroomed detached house Lauryn went upstairs to get ready for bed while Gwen walked into the back extension of her house.

“I thought ‘goodness, there’s ice all over the floor that’s weird. And why hasn’t it melted?’” she recalls.

“It took my brain a few moments to click what I was really seeing.”

One of the patio doors had been smashed in and it was glass which littered the floor.

“Then I realised that I’d clocked the side gate to the garden had been open and I began to notice other things as it dawned that we’d been broken into,” she adds.

“I called the police and when they asked me if the house was empty before I realised I’d sent Lauryn upstairs and couldn’t hear anything.

“I went into a total panic and just ran but thankfully she was just cleaning her teeth.

“There were dirty footprints up the stairs and in my bedroom.

“Everything was everywhere. It was a total violation, a real shock.

“And it turned out we were one of five houses in the area which were broken into that night.”

She adds: “We had jewellery stolen which was irreplaceable including Lauryn’s christening jewellery. And of course our mobile phones, an iPad and my laptop. It was just so shocking.

“I went into Sam’s room and saw his pocket money jar.

“He’d saved up £69 towards an iPad and it was gone. That was just the absolute worst.

“I work very hard and my kids save hard for what they want.

“For someone to come into your house and just take it because they want it, I’ll never understand it.”

Thinking back to April 2012, Gwen, a 43-year-old marketing officer with the Scottish Government, believes the criminals responsible might have been watching her house.

“The clocks had changed, it was the sort of evening that when you leave it’s light but a couple hours later it’s pitch black, as it was when we got home about 10pm. Now I wonder if they’d been watching and waiting for us to leave which still makes me feel sick.

“I had a light at the back which would have come on but they ripped that out.

“And I’m sure I heard the crackling of the glass as if someone was walking on it when I opened the door.

“The police suggested that our return might have disturbed them which is terrifying to think.”

She adds: “The next day I was sweeping up and looked across to my neighbours, who I knew were on holiday and their back door was swinging open they’d broken in there as well.”

Three years have passed since the night of the break-in but the trauma of returning home to discover strangers had looted her house and taken irreplaceable photographic memories stored on her children’s iPads has yet to pass.

“It changes you, being a victim of crime. For months after every time I came home I had to check every room.

“It took me a long time to love my house again and even now I have issues with the back door. I can understand why people would move.”

Gwen says the amount of housebreaking in the area where she lives has been horrendous. “Housebreaking is a massive issue around here. It feels like it’s easier counting the houses which haven’t been broken into than those which have, but then there’s no police presence.

“At the time it happened the police were good and their theory was that it was serious organised crime and things were stolen to order and small enough to stuff into

pockets.

“They also told me that these people use children to steal for them so if they’re caught then they don’t get the same kind of sentence. Of course they were never caught, nothing was recovered.

“The police asked me if I had photos of the stolen jewellery but who thinks of doing that?

“But since then I have done that and I put in a monitored alarm which gives me peace of mind and a padlock on the gate.

“I’ve got blinds on the patio doors because apparently if they can’t see in they won’t take the risk.

“I’m much more cautious and aware of what could happen though I know that if someone’s determined to get in there’s very little you can do.

“But I’m much more vigilant and I’d warn everybody to be.”

CASE STUDY 2

TERRIFIED pensioner Adam Wilson was left so traumatised after catching a housebreaker raking through his things he was forced to turn his home into a fortress.

The brave 71-year-old, from the Rutherglen area of Glasgow, caught repeat offender Ralph Campbell and chased him out of his home.

However, the awful experience left him feeling as if he had been “raped”.

In a victim impact statement read out in Glasgow Sheriff Court, he said: “I used to be the proud owner of three keys before my house was broken into, one for my front door, my back door and one for my garage.

“Now I own 10 keys and have metal bars on my kitchen window and toilet window, also metal wire mesh on my kitchen back door window.

“You asked me how I feel emotionally? Afraid, very afraid.

“I don’t know what it’s like being raped. That’s just how I feel, as if I have been raped.”

Campbell was given a two-and-a-half year sentence for the 2013 break-in.

In a similar case a vulnerable 54-year-old earlier this year revealed how she took refuge with a neighbour after thieves ransacked her home.

Anne McGarrigle was unable to return to her flat in Govanhill, Glasgow, after the intruders stripped it.

They struck in broad daylight on May 4, taking jewellery, a TV and even scoffed a box of her favourite chocolates.

Mrs McGarrigle, who suffers from multiple-sclerosis, said: “I’m disgusted…I can’t go back.”

CASE STUDY 3

IT was the holiday of a lifetime to the Caribbean but when the taxi back from the airport pulled up outside their home, they instantly knew something was wrong.

“When we went inside my daughter was crying. The house had been completely ripped apart and left in a horrible mess,” said Alec, still too worried about the incident to give his full name.

What Alec could never imagine at that point was the two years of anxiety, anger and depression that would follow.

Alec and his wife, both in their 60s, had returned to find their home ransacked and damaged, their possessions thrown about and some of their most precious things stolen.

“It left us feeling so vulnerable in our own home,” said Alec.

“It’s a horrible feeling and it was a shock to find our personal things gone. One of the things I most regret is that they stole a camera with a card in it that held the first pictures of our granddaughter who had just been born.

“It has hit us hard emotionally.

“My wife is very nervous at night and can’t sleep if there’s even the slightest noise.”

The couple first had to deal with the often-overlooked practical impact of the crime. The two thieves had jemmied open ground-floor windows which, though temporarily repaired, could not be made completely secure and had to be replaced. That took months and in the meantime, the couple could not leave their home overnight.

“We had to call off a holiday because of the security and then it has also cost us a lot to repair the damage. The insurance would only cover part of it,” Alex said.

The suspects who robbed their home were arrested which gave the couple some comfort but, after a long period of silence, they were shocked to discover the charges had been dropped.

This was the start of a fresh battle as the investigating police had all moved on and after the Police Scotland re-organisation there was no local service to follow it up.

The couple couldn’t get satisfactory answers why the case had been dropped and eventually had to get their MSP involved. The matter was referred to the Lord Advocate who ruled the case should be prosecuted but in the end only one offender was charged with selling on of items stolen from the house, not the theft itself.

THE Sunday Post has launched a survey to find out what you think about housebreaking. It’s run in conjunction with research panel YourViewK.

To let us know your views, go to

completeasurvey.co.uk/yourviewk

You’re under no obligation to take part in any other surveys and could win £150.