Scotland’s house break-in lottery

Housebreaking victims are facing a “grossly unfair” postcode lottery when it comes to the police catching the criminals who have shattered their lives.

The Sunday Post is today publishing the first-ever breakdown of burglaries and clear-up rates by council ward.

The figures show wild variances in the ability of the police to catch the crooks behind break-ins, with officers solving just a handful of cases in dozens of neighbourhoods across the country.To see where your council ward is on the list of housebreakings, click the link on the right.For the purposes of our investigation we compared areas where there had been at least 50 break-ins last year.

In the Garthdee suburb of Aberdeen, just one of the 56 housebreakings recorded was solved, meaning the detection rate stood at a paltry 1.8%.

The police’s performance was only marginally better in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, where the rate was 6.9%.

In Falkirk North, the area with the highest detection rate of those we probed, 62 of the 107 break-ins were cleared up. But that still means 42% of break-ins went unsolved.

Last week we launched our “Safe in Our Houses” campaign aimed at getting Scotland’s burglary epidemic to be made a priority by the police.

Overall just one in four domestic break-ins is ever solved and the council ward breakdown shows massive fluctuations even among neighbouring areas in the same towns and cities.

Scottish Labour justice spokesman Hugh Henry said: “These figures expose the postcode lottery when it comes to housebreaking in Scotland.

“It’s grossly unfair that where you live determines not just how likely you are to be a victim of this type of crime but also whether or not the police are likely to catch the criminal.”

“For some people being a victim of a break-in can feel like a violation. The least people should expect if it does happen to them is that no matter where they live the level of support they get from the police is the same.”

Some of the best detection rates last year were in town centre wards such as Inverness, Perth, Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline, which all exceeded 40%.

At the other end of the scale, fewer than one in 10 break-ins in Peterhead North in Aberdeenshire, Inverclyde South and St Andrews in Fife were solved. In defence of the police, there were areas where all or nearly all of the burglaries reported were solved.

These include remote parts of Shetland and the Western Isles.

However, in the vast majority of those just a handful of crimes were actually reported.

Lib Dem justice spokeswoman Alison McInnes MSP said: “These figures are hugely concerning and underline the impact the shift to the single force has had on local policing.

“In Edinburgh, a specialist housebreaking unit was disbanded when Police Scotland was established. This led to a 40% increase in incidents.”

“This postcode lottery shows that the balance of resources does not appear to be right.”

A breakdown of the figures also reveals a postcode lottery for housebreaking detections in the same cities.

In Glasgow, the Partick West ward had 160 recorded housebreakings last year with a detection rate of 7.5%.

The neighbouring ward of Anderston had 223 break-ins but a much higher clear-up rate of 25.1%.

Elsewhere, in Edinburgh which has been Scotland’s housebreaking hotspot in recent years the leafy suburb of Colinton had a clear up rate of 15.2% last year but the nearby ward of Fountainbridge and Craiglockhart had a rate of 33.3%.

One police insider said: “It is no surprise you have such a variance in clear-up rates for the different areas.

“There’s an element of the legacy of the old set-up where essentially some forces were better at catching these guys than others.

“Another factor is that we tend to see a spate of break-ins in an area. They’ll be the same person so if you don’t get them for one, you’ll not get them for a dozen and your detection rate suffers as a consequence.”

Last week we revealed there are 56 domestic break-ins every day across Scotland, but on average just 14 are solved.

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

Police Scotland Assistant Chief Constable Kate Thomson said: “Housebreaking is a priority for Police Scotland and we recognise the impact such an invasive crime can have on our communities.

“In December 2013 we launched Operation RAC across the country to target housebreaking offenders and to reassure the public that offences of this nature would not be tolerated.

“For 2014-15, reports of housebreaking fell by almost 2%, while the detection rate also increased to 25%.”

Couple’s agony as thieves even stole safe

Jane Rose begins to cry when she recalls the day she stood at a supermarket till and realised she couldn’t pay for her shopping.

“I’d just bought a new handbag and purse and when I was at the till for my messages I realised I didn’t have enough cash, so I thought I’ll pay by card, but of course I had none because they’d been in my old bag which had been taken when they’d broken into the house… I got really upset,” she sobs.

Fifty-six-year-old midwife Jane and her taxi driver husband Phil, 58, have had their bungalow in Longstone, Edinburgh broken into not once, but twice in the last two years.

“The first time it happened we felt it was our fault really. We’d had a party and gone to bed without locking the back door. Of course you should be able to do that and not expect to be robbed, but that’s what happened.”

Jane’s car was taken but bizarrely it was found in the driveway of a house in the next street. A few hours later there was a knock at the door. “This scrawny bloke was standing there, telling us he hadn’t robbed my house but knew who did, was returning my car keys and was happy to speak to the police.

“We couldn’t believe it. He fitted the description given by the woman who’d seen my car being dumped. We called 999 and told the police but it took them about 80 minutes to arrive, so we were giving him whisky and cigarettes to keep him there. We just hoped it would mean we’d get our stuff back.”

The police came and took him away and the Rose’s heard nothing more about it.

The couple then beefed up their security and even put a safe into their bedroom wardrobe but were robbed again in March this year.

“Our daughter called us and the police but we were back from the wedding we were at in Dunoon before they even arrived,” says Jane. “I said to my daughter ‘it’s ok everything was in the safe this time’, then she told me, they’ve taken the whole safe out.”

The Sighthill and Gorgie council ward in which the Rose’s live had 220 break-ins last year but only 46 one in five were cleared up.

Have you been hit by housebreaking? If so, we want to hear from you. Call 0141 567 2812 or email apicken@sundaypost.com.