ALMOST half of all crimes reported to West Yorkshire Police are being dropped with little investigation, it has been reported.

The figures are from a freedom of information request by Channel 4's Dispatches programme which asked police forces about cases which do not qualify for investigation after initial screening.

Dispatches says many crimes are logged and reported but never passed to an officer for investigation and that "nearly a million" crimes across the UK are treated this way.

Dispatches states that 46.53 per cent of crimes in West Yorkshire were reported to have been 'screened out.'

According to Freedom of Information requests, 52,077 reported crimes in West Yorkshire were screened out from a total of 152,790 in 2014. The figures stood at 69,851 out of 191,790 in 2015, 104,321 out of 229,422 in 2016, and 120,910 out of 259,827 last year.

Other forces recorded figures including 32.89% in Warwickshire, 40.35% in Bedfordshire, 39.84% for Greater Manchester Police, 29.48% for the Metropolitan Police, 31.21% in West Mercia and 30.68% in Hampshire.

Dispatches points out that there around 438,000 burglaries in England and Wales in 2017 and that 3% were solved.

Of the 21 forces who provided comparable data for burglary, 36.42% were being screened out, according to the figures.

The show noted there were more than 450,000 vehicle offences in England and Wales last year, including both thefts of cars and items from inside them.

Of the 23 forces who provided comparable data for sex offences, 3.26% were being screened out.

Marian Fitzgerald, visiting professor of criminology, University of Kent, told the programme: "It varies from force to force and some of them seem to be more gung-ho about screening out than others, but typically things like theft, criminal damage, vandalism, thefts from cars, interfering with cars.

"Those sorts of fairly commonplace offences, those are the ones that seem to be screened out fastest."

A Home Office spokesman said: "We expect the police to take all reports of crime seriously, to investigate and to bring the offenders to court so that they can receive appropriate punishment.

"The Government remains alert to changes in trends and new methods used by criminals and we will continue to work with the police, industry and others to consider the evidence and what more can be done to prevent these crimes taking place.

"The deployment of resources is a matter for chief constables and police and crime commissioners."

Assistant Chief Constable Tim Kingsman said: “West Yorkshire Police treats all reports of crime very seriously. Every crime reported is investigated - It must be stressed that all crime gets a primary investigation either by a police officer attending in person, or over the telephone by trained officers or police staff.

“However like every other Force we have limited resources, an increasing demand for our services and more complex challenges to deal with. We have to focus our efforts appropriately to ensure we are both effective and efficient.

“We do not have targets but given our limited resources we do prioritise our response and ensure where there are investigative opportunities we pursue them as far as we can.

“Each individual report is assessed using the THRIVE model. The Force does not have any targets for screening out crime – each crime is assessed on its individual circumstances so it would be impossible to set targets. Our Force Crime Management Unit resources use their training and professional assessment on each and every crime when making decisions to allocate or finalise crimes.

“Fewer than 20% of contacts with the police relate to crime. Of those, around 47% of crimes, or about 8% of all police contacts, are currently assessed after a primary investigation has occurred in West Yorkshire and finalised at this stage.”

“Under our demand management review we scrutinised a sample of 4,000 crimes from the initial report, right through until eventual finalisation. The number of crimes sampled provided a high confidence level that was statistically viable as a basis for the review. From that we identified that we were allocating far too much crime for secondary investigation – with no gain to the victim in most cases and we needed to focus our front line officer time more appropriately.

“The methodology used in the review indicated that our optimum finalisation rate after primary investigation was 56% of total crime, using the THRIVE (Threat, Harm, Risk, Investigation opportunities, Vulnerability and Engagement) risk assessment model, proportionality & solvability factors – so for example a crime might be finalised after the initial primary investigation if it was relatively minor and offered no investigative opportunities. “An example of such a crime that might be finalised could be a shed break-in that happened when the occupants were on holiday. The caller therefore may not know when it happened, there may be no witnesses and no forensic opportunities or CCTV available.”