Recent patterns and trends in UK dog theft

The last few years have witnessed growing concerns in the UK over the offence of dog theft. Despite this comparatively little has been written on the phenomenon of dog theft in the UK. The aims of this article are (1) to identify variation in the extent of dog theft in the UK for the period 2020–2022 and (2) to determine patterns of dog theft during this period. To achieve these aims, the article presents an analysis of Police FOI data for the period 2020–2022 as well as data provided by the UK’s largest free national database of lost and stolen dogs, DogLost.