Shop thefts have more than doubled in the past three years, costing retailers £953m a year, according to the British Retail Consortium

In recent months, David, the manager of a Leeds Co-op store, and his staff have been threatened with razors, knives, screwdrivers, needles and hammers by shoplifters who have become more brazen and aggressive.

“It feels like these offenders can simply come in and take what they want, and do what they want,” the 36-year-old said. “Not one or two items – they come in with bags, sacks or clothing, which can conceal hundreds of pounds’ worth of stock – coffee, meat, wine, laundry gel, anything that can be re-sold. It is looting. They are known in the city centre as repeat offenders … They know the police don’t have the resources or can’t attend quickly enough.”

People sharing on dark web how to modify software on their computers to manipulate photos of children, says IWF

Freely available artificial intelligence software is being used by paedophiles to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a safety watchdog, with offenders discussing how to manipulate photos of celebrity children or known victims to create new content.

The Internet Watch Foundation said online forums used by sex offenders were discussing using open source AI models to create fresh illegal material. The warning came as the chair of the government’s AI taskforce, Ian Hogarth, raised concerns about CSAM on Tuesday as he told peers that open source models were being used to create “some of the most heinous things out there”.

Sir Mark Rowley said the technology could help catch wanted criminals, but rights campaigners are alarmed

Britain’s most senior police officer has predicted that facial recognition technology will transform criminal investigations as much as DNA testing has done, a prospect that human rights campaigners have said will be dystopian.

In an apparent reference to the recapture of Daniel Khalife, the terror suspect who escaped HMP Wandsworth, Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said: “We’ve also shown recently that live facial recognition is massively effective at picking out wanted offenders from crowds of people.”

Daniel Khalife made a remarkable escape – but it can’t match the panache of some of his predecessors

It is nearly 60 years since, as the Guardian reported at the time: “The 30-year prison sentence which Ronald Arthur Biggs, one of the Great Train Robbers, began 15 months ago was abruptly placed in suspense yesterday afternoon when he was allowed out to exercise in the yard of Wandsworth prison, London. With three other prisoners he disappeared over the 20ft-high wall while his guards, obstructed by men still on exercise, watched helplessly.”

The reporter Tony Geraghty added that, like the train robbery itself, “this operation was characterised by panache and flamboyance”.

Andy Murcott and John Boxall respond to Gaby Hinsliff’s article about the budget cuts that have ruined policing

I retired from the police service in 2011, just late enough to experience the effects of austerity ( The dirty secret behind Tory ‘crime week’: their policies ruined policing1 September ). Historically, police officers had been allowed to work beyond their contracted 30 years, and many did so. However, due to the government’s policy of austerity, a police regulation was used to force out all those officers in my force who had completed their 30 years – the most experienced officers.

At the same time, a moratorium on recruitment was introduced. In addition to losing its most experienced police officers, the police service also lost a lot of its most experienced civilian support staff – analysts, scene-of-crime specialists, and police and community support officers.

Worldwide, 50 million people are victims of modern slavery. There should be no hiding place for those pulling the strings

More than 200 years after the international slave trade was formally abolished, the terrible truth is there has never been a better time to sell a human life than today. Business is booming for the criminals who engage in human trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery, not just across Asia, Africa and the Americas, but in mainland Europe and across the Channel into Britain too.

Every day, traffickers are pushing desperate men, women and children into the hell of modern slavery in the knowledge that their crime is almost cost-free. There should be no hiding place for criminals who trade in people, but the likelihood of criminal exploiters being put behind bars is remote. While there are 50 million people living in modern slavery worldwide, only 15,159 traffickers were prosecuted in 2022 and just 5,577 guilty verdicts were returned, equating to one conviction for every 8,965 victims.

Gordon Brown is the UN envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

Christmas toys that are appearing in front gardens may have been left to test whether homes are empty

There are plenty of very sensible and pretty conventional crime prevention tips on North Wales police’s website , from making sure windows are secure to planting prickly hedges on boundaries to deter thieves.

But this week officers issued some more unusual advice: keep an eye out for the cuddly Christmas gnomes that have begun appearing in front gardens.

When I heard Covid was keeping inmates in cells, I drove a car load of donated books to Pentonville. It became a project that now delivers thousands of books to British jails

It all started during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. I saw a tweet from HMP Pentonville asking for book donations for the prisoners who were stuck in their cells for 24 hours a day. I felt huge sympathy for them, having been sentenced, myself, to five years for tax fraud in 2016. It was far from easy during my jail term, but conditions were far worse during the pandemic as all visits, education and exercise were cancelled.

I called round my literary friends who had too many books on their shelves, and drove a car load to Pentonville, where they were gratefully received. Word quickly spread and I was soon delivering to a dozen jails in London and the home counties.

Enough pandering to wealthy foreigners: amendments to a new bill could boost transparency and toughen sanctions

Today, this government will have an unprecedented opportunity to end Britain’s role as a hub for kleptocrats and criminals who want to launder their cash. The long-awaited economic crime and corporate transparency bill returns to the House of Commons, where MPs will vote on a slew of amendments from the Lords that seek to close gaping loopholes.

The role of the UK and its offshore territories in pandering to wealthy foreigners was thrown into sharp focus by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Those closest to Vladimir Putin and his war machine – many of whom have long used “Londongrad” as a playground – were slapped with sanctions, and their known assets frozen. The government hastily passed its Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, making it easier, among other measures, to prosecute anyone involved in busting sanctions.