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[title]It’s a typical Friday night in the West End. Everyone’s filtered out of their offices and, obviously, straight into the pub. The boozers are rammed, everyone’s battling their way to the bar or the loo and people are getting a few rounds in. As the evening wears on and the pints mount up, people grow more and more careless – especially when it comes to their belongings.
It’s easy to see why pubs have always been a popular stamping ground for bag thieves. Working in packs, one thief distracts or guides, chatting on the phone or dragging stuff out from beneath tables with their feet. Then others do the snatching, focusing on the most vulnerable belongings (or the most distracted owners) before heading for the door. By the time you’ve realised something’s missing, they’re long gone.
And no one’s immune to these well-oiled thieving machines. A month or so back, even the government’s transport minister Huw Merriman found himself victim to bag thieves. The day after the biggest rail strike in a decade, Merriman’s bag and laptop – containing confidential details of negotiations with unions – were nicked from under his seat in a pub in Covent Garden.
From a pubgoer’s point of view, it feels like there are more bag thefts in pubs than ever right now. But is there any hard data to back that up? If they are high, why’s that the case? And, ultimately, what can we do about it?
The sitch
Heading out into Covent Garden to get the lowdown, it becomes clear very quickly that none of the pubs we speak to want to be named. And that’s understandable, tbh. After all, which hospitality venue wants to be outed as a robbery hotspot?
Typically, those pubs that have seen an increase in the number of bag thefts have a few features in common. They’re usually (but not exclusively) on the larger side. They have entrances that are far enough away from the bar so that, when it’s busy, people can slip in and out without notice. They also mostly don’t have security, even on busier nights like Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
In some London pubs, the situation is dire. Typically, mid-size bars in the West End have between two and five customer bags stolen a month. One pub we speak to says that it’s seeing a whopping ten thefts a month – and that the number appears to be increasing all the time.
Venues that have seen an increase have a few features in common
Not all pubs report the same astronomic increases in robbery rates, though. Instead, they’re more disturbed that the thievery hasn’t followed a typical annual pattern. These kinds of crimes usually peak at Christmastime and in the summer and have a bit of a lull in between. But this year, months after Christmas, there’s been no let-up.
According to one bar owner, bag thefts ‘always start going up mid-to-late November, and then by January they go down.’ ‘This year, they haven’t gone down,’ he says. That same pub, which used to see only a few bags stolen per year, now says at least two get nicked every week.
So let’s look a little deeper into some theories. Fortunately, a heck of a lot of research has been done into this sort of stuff, especially when it comes to different types of crime in different economic situations.
Asking the experts
It seems easy and obvious to link increased rates of crime with times of economic hardship. A little too easy, in fact. After all, logically, doesn’t it sort of make sense that, during a cost-of-living crisis, people might be forced into more desperate measures in order to make ends meet?
Only, academics are really, really split on whether that’s actually the case. From economists and criminologists to sociologists and forensic psychologists, there’s very little consensus on the impact of recessions on crime. In fact, some experts claim that harsh economic times often lead to less crime. If people have less, there’s less to steal. If people are short of cash, they’re going to be going out less and spending more time at home, so it’s harder to steal from them.
Others argue that recessions are more likely to not produce temporary bursts in levels of crime but instead create hardened career criminals. From the World Economic Forum to the London School of Economics, plenty of studies have found links between recessions and the likelihood of people pursuing a life of crime. After all, if any industry is pretty much recession-proof, it’s organised crime.
There are other studies, too, that point to higher rates of crime in areas of deprivation and inequality. But in the West End and the City, such inequality is hardly new. It’s existed for decades and hasn’t suddenly got much worse over the last few months. In other words, the recent uptick in stolen bags and belongings can’t really be explained through any of this stuff.
Crime rates are still returning to pre-pandemic levels
Instead, there might be a relatively simple explanation – and it’s to do with abnormal crime levels over the past few years that are closely linked to the pandemic and its ongoing effects. Professor of Crime Science Graham Farrell of the University of Leeds explains:
‘At the moment, it’ll look like crime rates are going up, but that’s because they’re still returning to the levels that they were at before the pandemic,’ he says. ‘During the pandemic, loads of crime rates plummeted.’
‘Crimes went down by about 70 percent,’ he says, ‘and they’re still well below the expected levels.’ In September 2022, Farrell contributed to a study of post-pandemic crime levels that showed that pretty much all crime was still at a very low level. The report (which you can have a look at for yourself here) shows that across England and Wales, crimes from robbery and shoplifting to general theft are all substantially down.
‘If you look at just the last year, it’ll look like crime has increased quite a lot – but it’s still below where it used to be,’ says Farrell.
Some pubs share this view. Several mentioned that the increase in reported crimes is likely the effect of increased footfall. The greater number of thefts is therefore an inevitability: establishments are busier than they were a year ago, and so, logically, they’re seeing more crime.
The rewards vastly outweigh the risks of getting caught
But there might be some element of truth to the economic aspect, too – particularly when it comes to bag theft as a specific crime. Dr Matt Long, who teaches criminology and sociology at Loughborough University, explains that ‘in times of economic austerity, social strain increases’.
Long describes theft as a ‘relatively minor offence’, saying that ‘those who commit such offences may feel they have little apprehension’. In other words, the punishment for the crime is lenient enough that, for many, it can be worth the risk of being caught.
This is reflected by what pubs are saying about offenders, too – and CCTV isn’t much of a deterrent. ‘We’ve seen them on the cameras loads of times,’ says one pub manager. ‘It’s the same people that come in.’ Thieves aren’t that subtle about it, either. From various pubs’ descriptions of the culprits, often it seems that it’s the same groups of thieves working in pubs that are all in close proximity to each other. For those criminals, the rewards appear to vastly outweigh the risks of getting caught.
Stop, thief! But how?
There are several things that can help make you less of a target for bag thieves. For starters, don’t leave stuff where you can’t see it, obviously. If they’re there, always make use of ‘Chelsea clips’, a kind of under-table hook that makes it much, much harder for thieves to snatch bags. Don’t hang stuff on the back of chairs and do hook your bag around your leg or a table.
If you want to go a step further, you can register and tag your possessions on tracking sites like Immobilise. If you’ve got an iPhone, make sure stuff like Find My iPhone is turned on, while you can also set up phone alerts with online banking for suspicious usage of credit and debit cards.
If anything you own does get stolen, make sure you tell not just your insurance provider but the police. While they might not necessarily catch the thieves, it’s important that this stuff gets recorded so that the police’s prosecution record is held to account.
It might be too soon to know for sure why pub bag thefts in central London are currently so high and we almost certainly don’t know when they’ll slow down. But we do know what you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. Watch your stuff.