Police have urged a town’s shop owners to join an initiative to identify prolific shoplifters.
Thames Valley Police sergeant Vicky Shears said it was “probably a small group of people” committing most of the offices in Slough.
The force is has encouraged shops to sign up to information-sharing platform DISC, in a bid to catch repeat offenders.
Sgt Shears said: “Unless the public tell us what’s happening, we don’t know.”
Between May and the middle of November this year there were 227 charges brought against people in the town.
Shoplifting charges have increased by 6% in east Berkshire in the last 12 months according to figures from Thames Valley Police.
Sgt Shears said: “We have quite a few people in Slough who are prolific shoplifters, as we would call them, so it’s probably a small group of people who are committing the most amount of crime.
“So what we need to do is find those people, arrest them and try and put them in prison.”
Nationally reported shoplifting offences reached a record high, with 530,643 reports in the year to March, a 20% increase from the previous year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
