Scotland's shoplifting rate overtakes England and Wales as convictions nearly halve

Scotland now has more shoplifting per person than England and Wales, by the biggest margin in figures going back to 2002. Police recorded 53,369 shoplifting crimes in 2025-26, the most since records began in 1971. Over the same years, the number of shoplifters convicted in court has nearly halved.

We went through 30 years of police figures, court records, food prices and data for all 32 councils to find out what is going on. Some of it fits the cost of living story. Some of it does not.

Four things the figures show

Scotland has overtaken England and Wales

Before Covid, Scotland had less shoplifting per person: 5.7 crimes per 1,000 people against 6.1 in England and Wales. Both rose sharply after 2022. Then they split. In 2025-26, shoplifting in England and Wales fell by 4%. In Scotland it rose by 19%.

England and Wales also had the “£200 rule” from 2014, which critics said made low-value theft a lower priority. Scotland never had it. Yet Scotland's rise has been bigger.

A record, and it is almost all shoplifting

The old high was 33,523 in 2018-19. The 2025-26 figure is 59% above it. Shoplifting now makes up 45% of all theft and dishonesty crime in Scotland. In 2019-20 it was 28%.

Almost everything else in the same crime group went the other way:

Add the other seven types together and they fell by 20%, from 80,721 to 64,671. Break-ins to homes and other buildings are at their lowest level since 1971.

Why shops, and not homes?

Some people point to the fall in other theft as proof that hardship is not behind this. That does not follow. Taking food from a big supermarket is a very different act from breaking into a home. It is quick. The chance of being stopped is low. The food can be eaten the same day. Breaking into a home means a victim, a real risk of violence and a long prison sentence. Someone under money pressure might do the first and never the second.

Shops have changed too. In a December 2024 report, Police Scotland listed self-service tills, fewer staff and shops' “non-confrontation” policies among the things driving retail theft. Many big retailers tell staff not to tackle shoplifters, to keep them safe. Those are the shops' own rules. We found no government policy telling staff to let thieves walk out.

Fewer shoplifters are being convicted

Research on crime finds that the chance of being caught matters more than how harsh the punishment is. On that measure, the trend in Scotland is stark.

In 2019-20, 5,422 people were convicted with shoplifting as their main crime. In 2023-24 it was 2,854, even though recorded shoplifting had risen by a quarter. For every 100 shoplifting crimes recorded, about 18 people were convicted in 2019-20. By 2023-24 it was about 7. A decade earlier, in 2014-15, it was 25.

Police solve a smaller share too: 74.6% in 2014-15, 66.3% in 2019-20, and about half every year since 2022-23. In fairness, officers are solving more cases than before, roughly 27,000 in 2025-26 against 20,300 in 2019-20. They have not kept pace with the rise.

The people who are convicted are not being let off more lightly. The share sent to prison rose from 26.3% in 2019-20 to 31.5% in 2023-24, and the average prison sentence stayed at about four months. What has changed is how many people are caught and convicted in the first place.

A council-by-council check

If a falling chance of getting caught leads to more theft, the places where it fell most should later see the biggest rises. We checked. Councils where the solved rate fell most between 2019-20 and 2021-22 did go on to see bigger shoplifting rises up to 2025-26. The link is moderate and unlikely to be chance. But it weakens a lot if you pick slightly different years. Treat it as a hint, not proof.

The early releases cover all short-term prisoners. The published figures do not say how many were shoplifters, so their effect on shoplifting cannot be measured yet.

Edinburgh has overtaken Glasgow

Edinburgh's shoplifting rose from 3,969 crimes in 2019-20 to 10,595 in 2025-26, up 167%. Glasgow's rose from 4,573 to 9,722, up 113%. The two cities alone make up more than half of Scotland's whole increase.

They also have some of the lowest solved rates. Police solved 38.4% of shoplifting in Edinburgh in 2025-26, down from 53.1% in 2019-20. Only East Lothian was lower, at 33.0%. In Glasgow it was 39.3%, down from 57.0%.

Across the country, shoplifting rose in 29 of the 32 council areas. The typical council saw a rise of 56%. Dundee has the highest rate for its size.

Is it worst in the poorest places?

If people are stealing to get by, you might expect the rise to be biggest in poorer areas. We tested that several ways.

• •Poorer areas have more shoplifting per person. That was true before the price rises and it is still true. The strength of the link has barely changed.
• •The rise itself was not bigger in poorer areas. We split councils into three groups by child poverty before the crisis. Shoplifting rose 87% in the least poor group, 59% in the middle and 64% in the poorest. Edinburgh drives the least poor group. Leave out the four big cities and the poorest group rose least, by 34%.
• •Where child poverty got worse, shoplifting rose more. This link is moderate, but it leans on Glasgow and Edinburgh and weakens without them.
• •Changes in Crisis Grant applications showed no link with changes in shoplifting.

One big caution. Shoplifting is counted where the shop is, not where the thief lives. City centres and retail parks draw people from far and wide, including organised gangs. So council figures are only a rough guide to local need.

Food prices explain the surge, up to a point

UK food prices rose 39% between April 2021 and March 2026. The yearly rise peaked at 19.2% in March 2023. If people are stealing because they cannot afford food, shoplifting should rise fastest when prices rise fastest. That is what we tested.

For most of the period, the fit is strong. The biggest jumps in shoplifting, 25% in 2022-23 and 35% in 2023-24, came exactly when food prices were rising fastest. Across 11 years, leaving out the two Covid years, the match between the two scores 0.82 on a scale where 1 is a perfect match. A match that close would happen by chance only about 2 times in 1,000.

Then it breaks. Food price rises slowed to 2.2% in 2024-25 and 4.3% in 2025-26. Shoplifting still grew by 16% and then 19%. Prices did not fall back; they just stopped rising as fast. Households still pay far more than in 2021, which could keep shoplifting high. It is harder to see why that alone would keep it speeding up.

Two other signs of hardship eased over the same years. Crisis Grant applications, the emergency cash councils give people with no money for essentials, peaked at 291,585 in 2022-23. There were 258,490 in 2025-26. Trussell food banks in Scotland gave out 218,838 food parcels in 2025. That is 13% fewer than in 2024 and 8% fewer than in 2019. Scotland is the only part of the UK below its 2019 level. Neither measure is perfect: councils ration grants, and some people now use other food aid. But neither shows hardship getting worse over the last two years.

Are shops just reporting more?

Some of the latest rise probably is more reporting. The Scottish Government funds the police Retail Crime Taskforce, which started in April 2025 and works mainly in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Lanarkshire. In the Scottish Grocers' Federation's yearly survey, the share of shops saying they were unlikely to report shoplifting fell from 48.2% to 10.9%. A Police Scotland inspector said the latest increase is “perhaps not reflective of a huge increase in offences”.

But reporting cannot explain all of it. Edinburgh and Glasgow were already rising fast in 2024-25, before the taskforce began. In 2025-26 the rest of Scotland, outside the taskforce areas, still rose 16%. And North and South Lanarkshire, both taskforce areas, barely changed.

Who is responsible?

Policing, courts, prisons and criminal law in Scotland are run by the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, not Westminster. The SNP has led the Scottish Government since 2007. The early release schemes, the sentencing rules and police funding in the timeline above are all Scottish decisions. The UK Labour government, elected in July 2024, runs policing in England and Wales only.

Labour's Crime and Policing Act 2026 scraps England and Wales's £200 rule and creates a new offence of assaulting a shop worker. None of it applies in Scotland, and those parts were not yet in force when we checked. Scotland's own shop worker protection law dates from 2021. The timing matters too: Scotland's biggest jumps, in 2022-23 and 2023-24, came before the change of UK government.

So what is driving it?

No single cause fits every fact. Our best reading of the evidence:

• •The cost of living crisis fits the timing of the biggest jumps, in 2022-23 and 2023-24, very closely.
• •A falling chance of being caught and convicted fits too. It started before the price rises and carried on through them.
• •More reporting explains part of the latest increase, especially in 2025-26.
• •Organised gangs and addiction are named by police and retailers. No reliable figures split the rise between people stealing to eat, to sell on or to fund a habit.

What the figures can and cannot prove

• •They can show that recorded shoplifting is at a record high, higher per person than England and Wales, while other theft is falling.
• •They can show that the rise tracked food price rises closely until 2024, and that far fewer shoplifting crimes now end in a conviction.
• •They cannot say why any one person stole. Crime figures count crimes, not reasons.
• •They cannot fully separate a real rise from more reporting.
• •Our tests use 11 years and 32 councils. Those are small numbers, so we treat the results as evidence, not proof.

You can download our council-by-council table of shoplifting, other theft, break-ins, Crisis Grant applications and child poverty from 2013-14 to 2025-26. Every figure comes from the official sources listed below. The tests and predictions are our own and are labelled as such.