The cost of living crisis is threatening a new surge in “high harm” burglary, car thefts and robbery as criminal gangs react to the rising expenses of everyday life by trying to make more money through offending, the head of the National Crime Agency warned on Monday.
Graeme Biggar said that criminal gangs had already “exploited the cost of living crisis” to put “more people at risk of crime” and that the threat they posed was continuing to grow.
But he warned that it was also “highly likely that all areas of organised acquisitive crime will increase” further “in the coming years” as “increases in the cost of living” lead more offenders to try to raise money unlawfully.
He said more people were also likely to be tempted to act as “money mules” unlawfully moving large sums of illicit cash into the banking system on behalf of crime gangs or to be tempted by bribery to help them raise funds to compensate for the increased costs of everyday life.
The new warning came in a new national threat assessment published today alongside a speech by Mr Biggar in London setting out the scale of the organised crime danger to this country.
It states that 59,000 organised criminals are either active in Britain or targeting this country from abroad, making an estimated £12 billion in criminal profits each year.
It warns in addition that £100 billion a year is being laundered through Britain’s financial system or companies and that the menace posed by organised crime is anticipated to become even greater over the coming years.
“The threat to the UK from serious and organised crime continues to evolve and worryingly, in several areas, to grow,” Mr Biggar said, adding that organised criminals were exploiting the war in Ukraine, and advances in technology, as well as the cost of living crisis, for illicit gain.
He said it was a “tragic fact that serious and organised crime causes more harm, to more people, more often , than any other national security threat”, causing families to be “ruined by drugs”, violence, “young lives cut short by overdoes and gun crime” and the deaths of migrants transported by traffickers.
Mr Biggar said that evolving threats including a rise in attempts to make firearms using 3D printers and online child sexual abuse – with 680,000 to 830,000 UK adults estimated to pose a sex risk to children – assisted by encryption and the use of artificial intelligence to generate images.
But one of the most significant elements of his agency’s new threat assessment is the predicted role of the cost of living crisis in fuelling “organised acquisitive crime” over the years ahead.
“It is highly likely that all areas of organised acquisitive crime will increase in the coming years due to increases in the cost of living,” the document states.
It says such crimes include “high harm and cross-border burglary” carried out by crime groups from here and abroad, as well as “vehicle crime, robbery, heritage and cultural property crime” and the theft of metals and agricultural and industrial machinery.
The document also warns of a “realistic possibility a realistic possibility that more people and/or businesses will be drawn into acting as money mules due to cost of living pressures” and that the temptation for people to accept bribes is also likely to rise.
Any increase in crime because of the cost of living crisis is likely to increase criticism of the Bank of England and the government for failing to control inflation more effectively, particularly as the general election looms next year in which law and order is expected to be one of the battlegrounds between the parties.
