The Crime Prevention Website

There were 115,905 bike thefts recorded by the police in the ‘crime’ year 2010/11, 6% up on the previous year, which gives us 318 bike thefts a day!  The Office for National Statistics states that ‘it is too early to say whether this represents an emerging upward trend as the longer term trend is fairly stable, with numbers of bicycle thefts recorded by the police showing small fluctuations around the current level for most of the last decade’

What these statistics don’t tell us though is that in the background there’s been a steady rise in bike ownership over the past decade to around 24 million today. Because the volume of bikes has increased against a stable theft rate this seems to suggest that the problem is getting slightly better year on year with owners being a lot more careful about bike security.

Many of our police services are working hard to reduce bike theft and one initiative worth bringing to your attention is the London Metropolitan Police Cycle Task Force.  They are currently registering bikes for free using BikeRegister.com, an excellent registration service that meets with the police preferred specifications for asset marking and database registers.  Maybe your own local police service is doing something similar, so it may be worth making some enquiries.

For more information about bike security do visit these pages on The Crime Prevention Website and please mark and register your bike – you know it makes sense!

Calvin

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