Nearly half a million shoplifting offences were recorded by police in England and Wales in a year, the highest 12-month total on record, figures show.
A total of 492,914 offences were logged by forces in the year to September 2024, up 23% from 402,220 in the previous 12 months.
The figure is the highest since current records began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Shoplifting levels had already reached a 20-year high last year, the ONS said.
Police recorded 1.8 million theft offences in the year to September, a 2% increase driven by shoplifting and a 22% rise in crimes involving theft from a person (146,109), according to the data published on Thursday.
It comes amid warnings that shoplifting is “spiralling out of control” after a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) suggested there were more than 2,000 incidents a day, with staff facing assault, being threatened with weapons, and racial and sexual abuse.
Major retailers have been raising concerns for months about the increased cost of theft while the Government has vowed to tackle low-level shoplifting and make assaulting a shop worker a specific criminal offence.