FOI 16720-25 - Gold Theft from Asian Families
Request:
In your police force area, how many incidents of "Asian gold theft" have taken place in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 to date.
To clarify: "Asian gold theft" is the theft of gold from Asian families. Criminals are targeting Asian families knowing that many have gold, for cultural reasons.
Please could you specify the number of incidents, and the value of gold stolen if available, per year?
Can you break it down by category too if possible for 1) theft from a person 2) residential 3) commercial
Response:
Search for all theft offences between Jan 1st 2020 and Sep 9th 2025 where the property stolen was gold and the victim self-defined as Asian.
| Year | Theft from a Person | Theft from a Residential Property | Theft from a Commercial Property | Total Thefts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| 2021 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 6 |
| 2022 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| 2024 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Victim ethnicity is not always recorded. Therefore, it is possible that there are more instances in which gold was stolen from an Asian victim that are not included in the above data.
It is not mandatory to indicate whether an offence is believed to be targeted. Therefore, we are unable to filter by whether the theft was targeted. The above data includes thefts that were likely to have been opportunistic, including, for example, thefts from motor vehicles.
Not all the thefts above are primarily of gold. A theft may be returned in the above data if it included a small amount of gold, for example, a wallet and a pair of gold earrings.
Please note that, as per the definition provided in your request, we have searched for gold thefts from Asian victims. A search for theft of property type “Asian gold” would provide different data. However, due to the way data is recorded, this data is also likely to be inaccurate.
It is not a requirement of Northamptonshire Police to record the value of items stolen. Officers are not qualified at giving a value of a particular item, nor are they able to factor in any age or wear & tear depreciation or appreciation. Victims equally may give a value for items stolen as new replacement value, or the value of replacing with the same item of the same age and condition.
Of 23 thefts, only 10 had any value information recorded.
Due to this, any information we do hold would not give an accurate picture of the total value of gold stolen.
The numerical data presented in this response is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.
If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.