When something is stolen, when a window is put through, when someone is assaulted, the quiet assumption most people still hold is that if you report it, the system tries to catch and punish whoever did it. The official figures say something colder. In Lancashire, about one recorded crime in ten ends with someone being charged. Nine in ten do not. And the uncomfortable part is that Lancashire is one of the better forces. Nationally it is worse.
What actually happens to a crime in Lancashire
Take every crime recorded by Lancashire Constabulary in the latest year and follow where it ends up. This is the official Home Office breakdown.
Two numbers should stop you. Almost a third of all crime is closed with no suspect ever identified, the investigation simply running out of road. And another third is dropped because the victim no longer supports action, very often because they have been worn down by months of waiting, or never felt safe enough to see it through. Between them, those two outcomes account for nearly two crimes in every three. The charge, the thing most people think of as justice, happens in roughly one case in ten.
Lancashire is one of the better ones
It would be easy, and wrong, to turn this into an attack on Lancashire’s police. The data does not support that. Lancashire actually charges a higher share of crimes than the national average (10.2% against 7.3%), closes fewer cases with no suspect (31% against 39% nationally), and the force’s own annual report records a “positive outcome” rate of over 21%, which it says is the second highest in England and Wales. The independent inspectorate, HMICFRS, found Lancashire brought 13.5% of crimes to justice, “higher than expected.”
So the frontline here is doing comparatively well. That is the whole point. If one of the best forces in the country still leaves nine crimes in ten without a charge, the problem is not this force or that chief constable. The problem is national, and it is structural.
A system that stopped finishing the job
Charging someone takes detectives, time, forensics and a court that can hear the case before the trail, and the victim’s patience, goes cold. All of those have been squeezed for years. The result is a justice system that records the crime, opens a file, and then, more often than not, closes it without an answer.
The “victim no longer supports action” figure is the saddest of all, because it is so often the system’s own fault. A victim who waits a year for a court date, who is never updated, who does not feel protected from the person who harmed them, drops out. The case is then logged as the victim’s choice. It was not really a choice at all.
And there is a slow, corrosive cost to this. People are not stupid. When word gets round that reporting a burglary or a theft leads nowhere, they stop reporting it, and stop expecting anything. The crime figures then fall, not because there is less crime, but because people have given up. A justice system that does not deliver justice eventually stops even being asked to.
What I want done
- Make the charge rate the number that matters. Forces and government are judged on all sorts of things. The one that counts to a victim is simple: was anyone caught and charged? Put that front and centre and hold the system to it.
- Back the police to finish cases. Comparatively good is not good enough at one in ten. That means the detectives, forensic capacity and court time to take more investigations all the way, not just open and close them.
- Cut the court delays that make victims give up. A third of cases collapse because the victim withdraws. Faster justice and proper support would save a large share of them. The backlog is a national choice, and it can be reversed.
- Keep Lancashire’s frontline resourced. A force doing better than most on a shoestring should be backed, not taken for granted because its numbers look comparatively good.
I have argued elsewhere that Burnley and Lancashire need more visible police on the streets. This is the other half of the same coin: it is not enough to report crime, or even to see an officer. In the end the system has to catch people and answer for what was done. Right now, nine times in ten, it does not, and even our better-than-average corner of the country should not accept that as normal.
Where these numbers come from
You do not need this part to follow the story. It is here so the working can be checked.
- The charge rates and outcome breakdown are from the Home Office, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025 (published July 2025). The England and Wales charge/summons rate across all offences (excluding fraud) is 7.3%. Lancashire’s figures (10.2% charged; 31.4% closed with no suspect; 31.3% closed because the victim does not support action) are calculated from the same release’s force-level open data, using the identical method as the national figure.
- “Second highest positive outcome rate in England and Wales” is from Lancashire Constabulary’s Annual Report 2024-25. “Positive outcome” is broader than a charge: it also includes cautions and community resolutions.
- “13.5% of crimes brought to justice, higher than expected” is from the independent inspectorate HMICFRS’s PEEL assessment of Lancashire, 2023-25.
Two honest notes. First, “charge rate” here is the share of recorded crimes that lead to a charge. It is a different thing from the Crown Prosecution Service’s much higher figure, which is the share of suspects already sent to the CPS who are then charged. Do not confuse the two. Second, there is no separately published charge rate for Burnley alone; the figures above are for the whole Lancashire force, which is the most reliable basis for comparison.