The number of pickpocketing cases has been soaring, with a sixfold increase in eight years, but it remains one of the most difficult crimes to solve.

Replying to a Parliamentary Question by MP Glenn Bedingfield, Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia revealed that an average of 25 people a year are arraigned, a total of 116 between 2013 and the first nine months of September.

However, a story published in the Times of Malta last March puts these figures into a very different context: there were 2,447 cases of pickpocketing reported to the police in 2016, but only 29 arraignments – barely one in a 100, although some arraignments may have been for multiple cases.

Read: Pickpocketing: a sixfold increase in eight years

Pickpocketing is the most common type of theft, increasing from 1,469 in 2013, to 1,538 in 2014 and 2,030 in 2015.

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