A "bike bait" unit should be set up in the National Crime Agency to catch bicycle thieves, the Liberal Democrats have said. The party has argued that the dedicated team could work with local police forces to place bikes, fitted with trackers, in theft hotspots enabling officers to trace thieves and gather evidence about wider criminal networks. It has cited Home Office data showing that across England and Wales 86% of bike thefts went unsolved between March 2024 and March 2025.
Coming out of the pandemic, many retail chains, political leaders, law enforcement officials and others told America there was an unprecedented level of shoplifting. Shoplifting became a political lighting rod, and videos of thieves smashing store windows and grabbing merchandise rocketed across the news and social media as a symbol of a breakdown across cities. But national crime data never showed a retail theft wave, though shoplifting did spike in certain cities like New York.