Tonight:
9°c
Just one in five Tube sex offenders is caught
Ruth Bloomfield01.06.09
Transport police are only tracking down one in five sex offenders who strike on the London Underground, figures show today.
There were 338 sex crimes on the network in 2008/09, according to British Transport Police figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Only 71 cases were solved, a detection rate of 21 per cent.
Most of the offences were sex assaults on women and girls aged 13 or over. There were 206 of these during the year, of which 43 were solved.
The other offences included:
11 sex assaults on men and boys aged 13 or over, which had a 45 per cent detection rate.
Four sex assaults on a girl under 13, of which one was solved.
53 incidents of outraging public decency, with a 15 per cent detection rate.
57 incidents of indecent exposure, with a 23 per cent detection rate.
The data, which include figures for the incidence and detection of sex crimes since 2003/04, showed that British Transport Police has consistently failed to deal with the problem.
The level of crime has remained fairly static throughout the period, reaching a high of 395 incidents in 2006/07 and a low of 332 in 2007/08.
Detection rates have remained low - 18 per cent of 357 crimes in 2003/04 were cleared up. The force's best result was 27 per cent in 2007/08.
Detection rates are slightly better on mainline trains but still only about a third of criminals are tracked down.
A BTP spokesman admitted the detection rate was low, but said: "You have got to look at the type of crime this is. Most of them are groping offences and there is less than one a day reported.
"When you consider the number of people using the Underground that is a very low figure, and these are quick, random incidents that are very hard to detect."
He urged victims to come forward and report crimes to allow police to build up an accurate pattern of sex offences on the network so the British Transport Police's indecency unit could tackle problem areas and target repeat offenders.
Reader views (3)
Didn't Boris promise to have more security on the trains when he got elected?
I haven't seen much more than usual of the British Transport Police patroling the stations and they always leave just before the trouble starts
- Josh, London
Is understandable though. If people report these offences a day or so later then CCTV is the only evidence and millions of people pass through stations, so unless the description is very exact it's a needle in a haystack. I've sat on a jury dealing with a Police sting operation to catch gropers, do they still do this?
- Mark, London
"When you consider the number of people using the Underground that is a very low figure, and these are quick, random incidents that are very hard to detect."
--> still too high !
- Josh, London
