Yvette Cooper also promised to introduce a new crime of assaulting a store employee. Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph
All shoplifting, no matter how minor, should be investigated by police under new plans announced by Labour.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, told Labour's Liverpool conference that the party would scrap the current plan. The £200 rule, which effectively decriminalized theft below this amount.
Changes to the law in 2014 mean those accused of stealing goods worth less than £200 will no longer have to appear to court, and they often get off with a small fine or an out-of-court settlement.
Figures show more than two thirds of serious retail crime is not investigated by the police, although shoplifting costs businesses almost £1 billion a year.
Ms Cooper said the rule meant that thefts valued at less than £200 are not investigated even if they were investigated. were committed by organized crime gangs who «come back again and again.»
At the conference she said: “We will scrap the £200 rule to tackle gangs of shoplifters.”
This means that the police will be required to investigate any shoplifting if there are reasonable grounds for investigation.
Ms Cooper also promised to introduce a new offense of assaulting a store worker, which would put retail staff on the same page with the police. fire, ambulance and healthcare workers.
This would mean that any attacker would face up to two years in prison if convicted.
The move goes further than the government, which had resisted such a move. It says changes to the law mean courts now treat shop workers' victims as an aggravating factor and can therefore impose longer prison sentences.
However, such a move by the incoming Labor administration would bring England and Wales into one next to Scotland. which introduced a similar specific offense.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) called for a new crime, citing a doubling in incidents of racial and sexual violence, physical violence and gun threats from a pre-Covid high of more than 450 a day. in 2019-2020 to more than 850 per day in 2021-2022.
Welcoming the move, Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said: «We need a separate offense to increase visibility of the problem so that police can allocate appropriate resources to tackle the problem and act as a deterrent to potential offenders.»
» Absos for adults»
Ms Cooper also announced plans to introduce «respect orders» against shoplifters and persistent troublemakers who infest city centers with anti-social behavior.
Described as «Asbos for adults» , they will enable councils and police to ban repeat troublemakers from city centers and towns.
Breaching the Asbo carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.
It is part of a plan to encourage councils and police to create «zero tolerance» zones where they will be expected to harass officers to stamp out the scourge of anti-social behavior.
The tactics will include hot spot policing, which is proposed to be rolled out across the country, with officers targeting known problem areas at specific points throughout the day or night.
Ms Cooper confirmed plans to recruit an additional 13,000 district and community policing officers. support officers on top of the extra 20,000 promised under Conservative leadership.
She also promised a new medal of bravery for police officers killed in the line of duty.
She unveiled plans for 90 new youth centers to give teenagers the best start in life » and «stop the knife crime that is killing our children.»
She said knife crime had risen by 70 per cent in eight years but «too little is being done». » and «a generation is failing.»
In a deliberate echo of Tony Blair's 1993 line, she said: «Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. We said it, we mean it, and that means we must act.
“Labour will introduce new laws to crack down on dangerous crime trafficking and stop gangs exploiting children.”
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