Critical infrastructure for the justice system
The shoplifting, the burglary, the bag snatches, the street robbery — the crimes that make towns feel unsafe and dominate local news — are not random. They are committed overwhelmingly by a small, identifiable cohort of people whose addiction is untreated and whose housing is unstable.
Shoplifting in England and Wales hit a record 530,000 reported offences in the year to March 2025 — a 20% rise in a single year — and the true figure, accounting for under-reporting, is estimated at close to 38 million incidents annually. The cohort driving this is the same cohort Alma is built to reach.
More enforcement and longer sentences have not solved this. The most prolific offenders — those with 36 or more previous convictions — now account for over 60% of all theft offences dealt with by the criminal justice system, a proportion that has grown steadily for 15 years. The cycle continues because the addiction and the homelessness that fuel it are never addressed at source. The party, the commissioner or the mayor that builds the infrastructure to solve this at source — not just punish it repeatedly — owns the most credible crime reduction argument in British politics.
£46–47bn
Annual cost of addiction harm
80%
Of all offending is reoffending
76% vs 36%
Reoffending rate: homeless on release vs settled housing on release — MoJ, 2024
£23.8bn
Annual cost of reoffending
300,000
People committing 50% of all crime
50% & 70%
Of all acquisitive crime and of all shoplifting is driven by heroin and crack cocaine dependency — Centre for Social Justice, corroborated by Home Office