- Crime DOESN’T pay… - 13th October 2026
- More breaking bad again - 13th October 2026
- Evan’s above - 12th October 2026
Regrettably during 43 years in journalism, (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor Welshman Phil Parry, crime stories have often dominated, but now comes news which could change everything for future reports – that burglars may now be caught using DNA samples taken FROM THE AIR!
It’s a bit like being painted further and further into the corner for burglars.
First came footprints, then fingerprints and stray fibres – even microscopic strands of DNA left on tools and surfaces have been used to catch the incautious.
Now they have something else to worry about: fragments of genetic material in the air.
All people, criminals and non-criminals alike, shed tiny traces of themselves wherever they go.
Some of this material (mainly skin cells, dandruff and saliva) ends up suspended as a personal debris cloud that can hang around after the person is gone, and a new study published in Forensic Science International: Genetics, shows that volunteers who pretended to ransack houses in controlled tests could be identified from DNA pulled from the air 30 minutes after they scarpered.
As with most forensic evidence, this alone is not proof of wrongdoing, but it could raise some awkward questions for someone without a good reason to be there.
In years to come this breakthrough might have a major impact on the statistics.
The latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) year ending (YE) March 2026 showed that there were an estimated:
- 9.6 million incidents of headline crime, which showed no statistically significant change compared with the YE March 2025 survey (around 9.4 million); including theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and violence with or without injury
- 2.6 million theft incidents, which again showed no statistically significant change compared with last year’s survey (2.8 million); however, there was a 21 per cent increase in other household theft (to around 791,000) because of rises in theft from outside a dwelling
- 4.5 million fraud incidents, once more showing no statistically significant change compared with last year’s survey (4.2 million); however there was a 10 per cent increase in the number of fraud victims (to 3.8 million victims) compared with the previous year’s survey (3.4 million).
Sadly the police do not have a good record on crime.
In the UK police response times are sluggish, and following a series of high-profile controversies, these have resulted in only 51 per cent of people thinking the police are doing a good job, down from 75 per cent in 2000, so the issues that need to be tackled by all police organisations are enormous.
For example the figures for illegal violence in the UK tell a familiar yet depressing story, because they make up almost 40 per cent of all crime.
As the number of crimes plummeted in England and Wales, so too has the proportion that were solved. In 2015 around one in six recorded crimes resulted in a charge or a summons.
Last year it was only around one in 20.
In sexual crime the clear up rate is particularly bad. The number of reported sexual offences has more than tripled over the last 20 years, to almost 200,000, yet the charge proportion is just 4.2 per cent.
The annual rate in Wales is 38.4 crimes per 1000 people (when for England and Wales it is 34.5 per cent), and compared to the UK crime rate, Wales is at 108 per cent as of October 2025.
The total number of violent crime is 117,000, and this figure increased by 1.6 per cent year-on-year in the period of October 2024 – September 2025.
After a Crime and Policing Bill was introduced to the House of Commons (HoC), the UK Government proclaimed: “Trust in the police has been undermined by failures in vetting and the appalling misconduct of some officers”.
Meanwhile ordinary officers are at their wits’ end, and the Police Foundation (PF) has said: “There is a pressing imperative for ambitious police reform, which can only be delivered by the co-ordinated efforts of government, policing and its enabling partners”.
The warning from the PF has been underlined by scandalous recent events, and in one a young woman was wrongly strip searched.
Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable (CC) of the force concerned, Greater Manchester Police (GMP), described the actions of his officers towards ‘Maria’ as “an inexplicable and undefendable exercise of police power”.
Perhaps it may also be ‘inexplicable’ as to why a person’s DNA was in the air of a property where there had been a burglary?!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing career in journalism (when crime stories were key) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in another book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow – as he has written many times free expression and tolerance are fundamental (especially of critical media outlets like The Eye), but there are limits (racism or homophobia should NOT be tolerated for example), and today we have more evidence of how this cause (without the limitations) has been taken up, incongruously, by the right.
