Jenny Kabala explores the risks of the police’s controversial power to enter homes without a search warrant in pursuit of stolen electronics.
I am one of the lucky few who can say that I have never had my mobile phone stolen, but many have! With street thefts of mobile phones and other electronic devices ever on the rise, the Government are now proposing a bold new move to tackle this prevalent offence.
In an article published on the Government website on 3 September 2024, we were told that:
“The government has pledged to crack down on “snatch thefts” after this criminality soared by more than 150 per cent in the last year.”
“An estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags grabbed from them on the streets, with policing intelligence suggesting that this is being driven by increased demand for second hand smartphones, both in the UK and overseas.”
Doubtless, the theft of mobile phones from the streets is a big problem; however, under controversial new proposals, it appears that the police may soon have new powers to enter homes and search for stolen devices without the need to first obtain a warrant from the court.
The question is, is this precisely the kind of bold solution required to tackle the problem or a dangerous overreach, ripe for abuse by the authorities?
The Problem with Warrantless Searches
Recent Crime Survey data suggests that:
- For the last 12 months, more than 200 “snatch thefts” occur on streets across England and Wales every day. To put this into perspective, that is the highest rate for this type of offence for more than a decade and represents a 60% increase from the year 2012 to 2013;
- In the last year “thefts from the person” (including “snatch and stealth thefts” and “attempts to steal from the person”) have increased by more than a third; and
- In the last year, around 36% of “thefts from the person” involved the theft of a mobile phone.
Unsurprisingly, London topped the list of cities in the UK with the most phone thefts, with 121,888 in only a year, with 1,250 thefts for every 100,000 people. If we break that down, this means that a mobile phone is stolen in London every 4 minutes, on average! This is followed by Bedfordshire, with 371 thefts per 100,000 people, and Hull, with 361 thefts per 100,000 people. This is according to figures provided by insurance company, Protect Your Bubble, on 6 February 2024.
As you might imagine, the portable nature and size of mobile phones makes them very difficult to find and, if you are going to, it needs to be done quickly. Though the owner of the phone might be able to track it for a period, the window of opportunity is miniscule; something which, until now, has been far beyond the capabilities of an already overworked and underfunded police force.
The New Proposals to Tackle Phone Theft
To tackle the problem, the Government is now proposing controversial new legislation to give the police increased powers to locate mobile phones quickly and retrieve them before they disappear into the ether.
This will take the form of the new Crime and Policing Bill – part of the Government’s new “Safer Streets mission”.
Amongst the new provisions set out in this bill, none are more controversial than the proposal to grant the police new powers of entry to any property to which a stolen device has been tracked (such as mobile phones, laptops and “Bluetooth-tagged bikes”) without the need for them to first obtain a warrant from the court.
Whilst these new proposals will undoubtedly have many innocent victims of theft applauding the Government, you will forgive my scepticism. Questions have already been raised about the reliability of some of the tracking apps used to locate stolen mobile phones and it doesn’t take a particularly vivid imagination to foresee that some unsuspecting homeowners may well receive a VERY unwelcome – and rather uncordial – “visit” from the police.
The response from Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, does little to allay such fears either. In a BBC News article, published on 25 February 2025, she responded to these concerns by saying simply:
“Police will have to make decisions [and] it will need to be signed off by a police inspector, and [they will] need to make decisions about where the evidence is good enough for them to be able to act.”
Are we really expected to believe that the police are capable of making these deliberations and taking the swift and decisive action which is necessary? I, for one, have my doubts.
This is also ignoring the fact that theft of a mobile phone is already an offence, and one that many judges find to be an aggravated offence by the virtue of the fact that losing a mobile phone causing such difficulties for people. Our mobile phones have our bank details, emails, personal information as we as other security issues such as two factor authentication meaning have a phone stolen is a nightmare. The courts are already well equipped to sentence more harshly for theft of a mobile phone and so a new offence was hardly necessary. I suspect it is simply a ruse to add greater police powers to their arsenal through the back door.
Another proposal which forms part of this bill is that offences of shoplifting, where the value of stolen items equates to less than £200, will no longer be treated as a summary only offence (i.e. an offence only capable of being dealt with in a Magistrates’ Court) and will be capable of being heard in the Crown Court. Loathed as I am to agree with a Conservative MP, I can only echo the concerns of Shadow Home Secretary, Victoria Atkins, and fear that the increased severity of what would previously have been treated as a low-level offence might only add to the pressure on an already overwhelmed court system.
Ultimately, only time will tell whether the new Crime and Policing Bill will actually make a difference – I certainly hope I am proven wrong! – but as with many of Parliament’s tough new schemes, I fear that the new proposals will only create new problems, rather than solving our current ones.
