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Which UK airport has the most passenger arrests?

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As you can imagine, our inboxes overflow daily with the results of spurious ‘surveys’ and ‘research findings’, all conducted by companies who think they can get a bit of cheap publicity. We delete virtually all of them.

This one, though, made me sit up with its sheer originality and I felt we should share it.

Which UK airport has the most passenger arrests? Where are you most likely to find shoplifters, pickpockets and people keen to commit assault?

Here are the results. Note that Scottish airports are excluded because Police Scotland refused to co-operate with the enquiry. Would that have changed the results?

Yes, it is the people of South Yorkshire who won the ‘top crims’ award for 2019-2021.

The top offences at Doncaster Sheffield were shoplifting, theft, and ‘assault without injury’. The good news is that the crime statistics in Doncaster as a whole are now likely to drop following the closure of the airport at the end of the month …..

Over at Birmingham, potentially due to the greater number of long haul flights, the top cause of arrest was passengers trying to do a runner having had a warrant issued against them.

Leeds Bradford picks up the third spot due to a substantial number of violent attacks inside the terminal, which was the No 1 cause of arrest. It also scores highly for fraud-related arrests

The study was put together by luggage storage company Bounce. Freedom of Information Act requests were made to the relevant police forces serving each mainland airport for the period 2019 – 2021. Police Scotland did not provide any data. As this covers periods of covid closure, the ‘arrests per million passengers’ number is more relevant than the total number of arrests.

Category

General

Comments (52)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Mike says:
    17 Oct17 October 05:55

    Bit of a niche article this one 😀

  • TimM says:
    17 Oct17 October 06:03

    Interesting not to see any Manchester Airports Groups airports (Manchester, East Midlands and Stansted) in the list. Perhaps it is the ‘Cell Block H’ security regime that passengers must pass through that makes them behave? Or else MAG did not take part and Bounce failed to mention that.

    • Czechoslovakia says:
      17 Oct17 October 06:27

      I expect all the arrests for staying 2 seconds over your allotted time in the “car park” or “drop (all your cash) off” areas don’t count there? 🙂

      • mvcvz says:
        17 Oct17 October 10:34

        These would not be a matter for arrest. They are civil law, alleged breach of contract issues.

  • Nick says:
    17 Oct17 October 06:25

    It would maybe also be interesting to know what percentage of the arrests were airside, and which were landside.

  • Tariq says:
    17 Oct17 October 06:27

    Given the top 3, the complete absence of Luton from the top 10 is also surprising.

  • Andrew. says:
    17 Oct17 October 07:09

    Wonder if the wording of the foi request was simply incompatible with Scot’s law. Eg mentioned the CPS rather than the Procurator Fiscal.

    Learn something new. Somehow I thought airport policing was undertaken by British Transport Police.

    • memesweeper says:
      17 Oct17 October 08:05

      Nope, a different force for almost every international airport. Really ought to be a national force like MOD or nukes guarding IMO.

      • NorthernLass says:
        17 Oct17 October 09:12

        No it isn’t, airports are policed by the force area in which the airport is located – so MAN is covered by Greater Manchester Police, and so on. Though that one has the boundary with Cheshire very close by so there are regular squabbles about who’s responsible for what (e.g. when you car gets vandalised in a MAN car park which is technically situated in Cheshire!)

    • Ben says:
      17 Oct17 October 08:56

      Scotland also has a separate division within BTP subject to Scots Law and any variances in legislation. So likely wouldn’t have made much difference here.

  • John says:
    17 Oct17 October 07:13

    The statistics seem to conflate several different things: people who have committed crimes unrelated to the airport and are trying to escape the UK, and people who are suspected of committing a crime at the airport / on board incoming aircraft.

    Not sure if people committing immigration offices are included. Also potentially there may be people unrelated to the UK on an international arrest warrant who were caught while in transit.

    Smaller airports such as DSA and LBA are more likely to be used by local residents and visitors to the local area; but BHX and especially the London airports will have a mixture of passengers from all over the UK, or visiting there. In addition, even though they have calculated an “arrests per million” figure, LGW had more passengers than the other 8 airports besides LHR combined, so I don’t think it is really valid to place LHR and LGW in these “rankings”.

    • Rumpole KC says:
      17 Oct17 October 11:37

      This is key and makes the stats (like most) meaningless without context.

  • Richie says:
    17 Oct17 October 07:36

    BACF airport LCY in there at 4th!

  • barnaby100 says:
    17 Oct17 October 07:59

    Does it directly relate to the most alcohol outlets per number of travellers ? LBA is certainly the airport with the most visibly intoxicated passengers.

    I have twice had arrests made on the plane at LBA, assume the passport flagged up something as they went through as there was no obvious reason to be arresting them.

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