Some 40,000 thefts have been reported to the police in the past four years, making up more than half of all the crimes committed, official figures seen by The Sunday Times of Malta show.

A breakdown of the crimes reported to the police since 2011 shows that theft is the most common offence being committed, making up 52 per cent of the 74,000 crimes brought forward for investigation.

The police figures show that the most common form of theft occurs in the home - 4,000 cases – with one out of every 10 reported thefts happening in a residence.

The police recently arraigned five Eastern Europeans, believed to have been behind at least 28 burglaries since 2014.

Theft makes up nearly nine out of every 10 attempted offences.

Police have received 2,385 reports of attempted theft since 2011, just a handful shy of all the attempted crimes reported in the past four years.

There have been 380 cases of theft from building sites, double the amount of armed robberies. While some thieves might be after jewellery and light loot, others are more daring. Around 300 cars are reported stolen every year and among the large objects stolen were fridges, sofas, washing machines and shop display cabinets.

People are even stealing while at work, with nearly 400 cases of theft from offices since 2011. There have also been 186 reported thefts from “religious temples”.

Criminologist Saviour Formosa said this had long been the trend but it had showed a slight change in recent years.

“This has been the state of play in Malta for many years. Theft has been the most popular offence for some time. However, last year we saw a sustained drop in this offence for the second year in a row,” he said.

Dr Formosa said theft was mostly seen as a non-violent offence but this was not necessarily what attracted potential criminals to steal.

“One of the main reasons we see theft happening is the affluence, which is abundant on the island. There is a lot of wealth and a lot of it is out in the open,” he said, adding that thieves were often tempted to steal the wealth that was “out on display”.

The bout of break-ins also coincided with a series of pickpocketing incidents.

Last month, Michael Mallia who heads the Criminal Investigation Department’s General Crime Unit told this newspaper that police were mounting covert operations to nail pickpockets.

The police figures list pickpocketing in a separate column, with a whopping 6,312 incidents re-ported in the past three years. The number of pickpocketing incidents reported so far this year has nearly equalled the 1,500 cases reported in 2014. Last year’s cases were double the number filed in 2011. Also listed separately, snatch and grab reports reached 666 over the past four years.

The next most common form of theft occurs in shops, with some 2,600 cases in the past two years. Customers were reported to the police for 1,060 of the thefts; the remaining ones were either committed during break-ins (900) or by employees (240).

Crime by numbers

• There have been nearly 1,000 cases of computer misuse. Around 650 of these were unauthorised access of protected files. There have been 70 cases of protected data being copied without consent and 17 cases of this data being deleted.

• The police have investigated 390 arson cases since 2011.

• More than 4,600 cases of domestic violence have been investigated over the past four years. The majority of cases, 1,817, were described as “psychological harm”.

• 140 people have been blackmailed in the past four years.

• Around 2,000 cases of fraud have been investigated since 2011. The most common is fraudulent gains, followed by offences involving counterfeit products and the Customs Department.

The main subject on Tuesday’s #TimesTalk will be burglaries in Malta.Watch on TVM at 10.05pm.