More cops on the street? Streamline processing to get these criminals off the street?

No point in streamlining the processing when the courts just smack them on the wrist and let them go. Some proper deterrent sentencing might help, and would also be an incentive for the police to catch them.

But with insufficient prison places, what counts as a deterrent to somebody who (most likely) already has previous, and is either thieving to fund a drug habit, or as part of a criminal enterprise?

Even if we magicked up more prison places, it costs around £70k a year to keep each specimen of vermin in clink.

That's the point of deterrent sentences. How many of those prison places are occupied by the career crooks who see an occasional few months behind bars as just the price to pay for their lifestyle? If instead they knew they were looking at 1-2 years each time, would it change their behaviour? If it truly works as a deterrent you'd expect to see fewer people in jail over time.

There's also the possibility of non-custodial sentences, such as financial or social penalties.

At the moment there's an assumption that if the crime results in a relatively small financial loss to the victim, the sentence should be small. That completely ignores the far greater psychological effects of something like a house burglary, or the cumulative effects on a society of seeing things like shop theft being ignored.

The problem is career criminals know how to game the system to ensure they get lighter sentences.

I do wonder if there's a better approach: One where the initial sentence is light, to give people a chance to clean up their act (the slapped wrist approach), but any subsequent conviction will land an increasingly harsher sentence, meaning repeat offending is less pleasant.

Plus... let's make the convicts pay for anything beyond basic bread and board. If they want TV, they have to earn it. They want education, they earn it. They can take on jobs around the prison to pay for the extras via work credit, even to pay off some of the sentence so they can be released early. They don't have to, though: They could just sit there with the absolute minimum and for the full term of their sentence: That's their choice. But if they choose to work: That cuts costs, and it helps them get used to the idea of working for a living.

Plus... for a thief, take all that stuff away from them at random times. Just so they know what it's like to be the victim of theft. Seemed to work with car thieves who liked stealing cars to go joy riding, destroying the cars in the process...

If instead they knew they were looking at 1-2 years each time, would it change their behaviour?

No. Do you really think that phone-thieving scratters (or any other career criminals) make rational choices about anything? There's plenty of credible research that shows that increasing or decreasing the severity within current criminal justice has no effect on the incidence of the crime in question. And picking off one or two of London's sizeable criminal class as an example won't make a difference because the odds for a thief are still in favour of not being caught.

It's pretty clear that Western justice systems are miserable at reforming career criminals, with 9% of the offending population responsible for just over 50% of convictions, what would work is simply removing those resistant to reform from society - basically, any offender has their sentences materially increased for subsequent offences, with a default position of jailing career criminals. If somebody has three convictions for burglary, then lock them away for twenty years (and the next time, full life tariff). Note that this is not deterrence at all because stiffer sentences don't deter, but it is a practical approach to reducing the societal costs of dealing with scum.

Neil O'Brien has some more factual stuff that's generally along these lines, but I'm not claiming he's agreeing with my views above:

https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/super-prolific-criminals-new-data

There are planned crimes and unplanned. Planned crimes should be treated differently.

Make caught criminals pay 10x the amount stolen, or face your name and photo placed on a public www. The same applies to shoplifting. A 50 cent bottle of water would cost you 5 pounds if caught.

The right to be forgotten only applies once the 10x-debt is paid back. Else everyone knows your planned crimes.

Once the cost of crimes exceed the cost of imprisonment, imprison the person. Also consider corporal punishments - I would love to see those for graffiti.

The BBC had a very interesting piece on this in October

75% of phone thefts are in London of which half was down to a single gang

Xmas Eve a member of the public was so annoyed that their phone was stolen the tracker put it at Heathrow.

The Met with cooperation of Heathrow raided and found almost 900 phones and then found even more shipments to Hong Kong

Big round up of gang had foreign nationals stealing tens of thousands of phones

But if Prison places are a issue, pay the countries who nationals they are to incarcerated then

Prison time where you come from would be a much bigger punishment

This is possibly why Samsung, Apple etc AND the Met know no technology will stop it if China is just going to strip the phones back to their elements

For our family we tend to stay out of the cities anyway

as I recall clearly being told that operators were going to make it impossible for a stolen IMEI to work with any network,

However, I am curious as to how the snatchy thieves make their determination as to what to risk their liberty stealing. I's struggle to tell an iPhone 1 from an iPhone 17 in my hands let alone moving in someones hand from across a street ?

And if phone theft really was that much of a worry, surely someone, somewhere would have popularised a simple case in the form of a crap phone to put your iBaby in ?

The problem with blocking by IMEI is that you have to get all major carriers on all continents to sign up, or there will still be a market somewhere where stolen phones can be used. Automatically blocking the IMEI of a phone reported stolen across all UK carriers would be a good start though.... and I can't see that it would be all that difficult to achieve either.

Then they get stripped down and sold for spare parts, here or abroad.

So that's why Apple & Samsung use all that glue when making their phones! It's to make them nearly impossible to strip down and sell as spare parts!!!

---------> Mine's the one with the Fairphone in the pocket ......... if it hasn't already been stolen and stripped down for spares!

As already commented, many modern phones are not easy to strip down and manufacturers are coming under serious pressure to make it easier for (Apple being one company firmly in the spotlight). And Apple are also hammered for making parts that can be stripped out harder to re-use. We need to decide where we want to compromise:

a) Phones that are hard to strip down and, therefore, less valuable to thieves (and, I'll add, modern manufacturing methods with tighter integration and fewer pressure-based joints tend to need far fewer repairs)*.

or

b) Phones that are easy to repair (and will probably need more frequent repairs) but then easier to dismantle after theft.

* I'm basing that on my personal experience, lately as a user and, in my student days, someone who earned money repairing electronic consumables, and to whom it was apparent that there was a relationship between ease of dismantling to repair and the times a repair was needed. But, as always, YMMV.

Are they not the clowns you vote for every five years ?

" tell an iPhone 1 from an iPhone 17 "

The iPhone 1's 115×61×11.6 mm vs the 17's 149.6×71.5×7.95 mm is bit of a give away.

My diminutive SE 1 stands out today at 123.8x58.6x7.6 mm but alas now unsupported.

My replacement refurbished SE 3 is 138.4x67.3x7.3 mm :( I think the 12 mini and 13 mini are slightly smaller but co$tly.)

The population of London is roughly 10 million with 80,000 phone thefts ~ 8 thefts per 1000 persons.

The current stats for AU aren't readily available but the rate of increase on older stats suggests the current rate is comparable.

The regulatory situation is pretty much the same as the UK but doesn't seemed to be much of a political issue here.

Possibly smartphones are cheaper (or more likely the ones most people buy) and more "disposable" here—I don't know.

iPhone 17 Pro Max - incl. local tax

Australia - AU$ 2199

UK - £1200

More or less the same once you take GST / VAT into account.