背景介绍：
在英格兰西北部南波特的默西塞德郡，自行车盗窃问题日益严重，成为社会安全与民众困扰的焦点。据统计，英格兰和威尔士去年约有20万辆自行车被盗，找回概率极低。为应对这一挑战，默西塞德郡警方率先尝试对骑自行车者进行例行拦截检查，并取得显著成效。然而，警力资源不足、犯罪手段升级等问题仍困扰着自行车失窃案件的侦破与防范。
The
scourge
of
stolen bikes in Britain
英国自行车被盗难题
An experiment
in Liverpool shows how the police can tackle bike theft
利物浦的一项试验展示了警方如何解决自行车盗窃问题
On a summer’s day
in Southport, in north-west England, the Merseyside police were on the hunt for
stolen bikes. Their suspicions were raised by a “well-known male”, recently out
of prison, on a notably pricey bicycle.
在英格兰西北部南波特的一个夏日，默西塞德郡警方正在搜寻被盗的自行车。一名最近刚出狱的“小有名气的男子”骑着一辆价格不菲的自行车，这一异常举动立即引起了警方的怀疑。
Officers stopped him, entered the bike’s details into a database and rang the owner, who had been under the impression his bike was locked up outside his workplace. It had been recovered before he’d realised it had gone.
警察迅速采取行动，拦住了他，并将自行车的详细信息输入数据库，随即联系上了车主。车主在接到电话时还一无所知，他原本以为自己的自行车仍安然无恙地锁在工作地点的外面，未曾料到自己的自行车在未被察觉的情况下已被找回。
The Merseyside police force is the first
in England and Wales to experiment with routine stops of cyclists. It has
carried out more than 4,000 checks in the past year. But its example is likely
to spread.
默西塞德郡警察局是英格兰和威尔士首个尝试对骑自行车者进行例行拦截的警察局。在过去一年里，该警局已经成功执行超过4,000次检查。这一创新举措不仅在当地取得了显著成效，还可能在未来得到更广泛的推广。
Bike theft is a
blight
in many British cities. Around 200,000 bikes were reported stolen in England and Wales last year; the real number is much higher because many thefts go unreported, and bikes taken in burglaries are usually not separately recorded as bike thefts.
自行车盗窃一直是英国许多城市的一个顽疾。据统计，去年英格兰和威尔士约有20万辆自行车被盗，而实际数字可能要远高于此，因为许多盗窃案件并未被报案。此外，在入室盗窃案中，被盗的自行车也往往不会被单独记录为自行车盗窃案。
Very few are ever recovered. In London more than 90% of bike thefts in 2022 went unsolved, leading some politicians to complain that it has been “effectively decriminalised”.
以上种种因素导致找回失窃自行车的概率极低。在伦敦，2022年超过90%的自行车盗窃案未能得到解决，这一现状引起了部分政客的强烈不满，他们抱怨称自行车盗窃事实上已经“合法化”了。
This is not just a pain for their owners.
Stolen bikes and e-bikes have also become the getaway vehicle of choice for
thieves, according to the Merseyside police. In one way or another, some 80% of
acquisitive crime in Liverpool involves a nicked bike.
自行车失窃问题不仅给车主带来了极大的困扰，还对社会安全产生了深远影响。据默西塞德郡警方称，被盗的自行车和电动自行车已成为小偷首选的逃跑工具。在利物浦，约80%的财产犯罪案件都涉及到了被盗自行车，这一数据令人触目惊心。
That is bad for cities, which have built
thousands of miles of cycle lanes in recent years. The likelihood of having a
bike stolen still puts many would-be riders off, says James Brown of
BikeRegister, a company which sells security-marking kits, which tend to
include a unique code that is hard to remove. Others give up after having one
or two bikes stolen.
对于近年来大力修建自行车道的城市而言，自行车盗窃问题无疑是一个沉重的打击。BikeRegister公司的詹姆斯·布朗指出，自行车被盗的风险仍然是许多潜在骑行者望而却步的主要原因。该公司销售的安全标记套件虽然包含难以消除的唯一代码，但仍有许多人在经历了一两辆自行车被盗后彻底放弃了骑行。
It is also
corrosive
of trust in the
police. The “broken-windows theory”—coined by two American criminologists,
James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, in the 1980s—held that visible signs of
crime often lead to more serious wrongdoing.
此外，自行车盗窃问题还严重削弱了人们对警察的信任。根据“破窗理论”，犯罪的明显迹象往往会导致更严重的违法行为。
As bikes have grown more popular, their stripped
carcasses
have become one of the more obvious signs that low-level crime is permitted. Cyclists complain that, even when they find their stolen bike on a second-hand website, the police won’t help.
如今，被拆毁的自行车残骸已成为“默许轻度犯罪行为”的明显标志之一。骑车人纷纷抱怨，即使他们在二手网站上发现了自己被盗的自行车，警察也往往不会伸出援手。
Part of the problem is simply that police
are stretched. Community policing has been pared back, making
brazen
street
theft less risky. For those officers tasked with investigating crimes, the loss
of a treasured two-wheeler can be a long way down the list. As home security
has made burglary harder and more people have taken to getting around on flashy
rides, bikes have become an attractive target.
问题的部分原因很简单，就是警力资源的严重不足。社区警务力量的削减使得街头盗窃行为变得更加肆无忌惮。对于那些负责调查犯罪的警官来说，一辆珍贵自行车的失窃案可能根本无法排上优先级。随着家庭安全措施的加强，入室盗窃变得更加困难，而高档自行车则成了小偷们的新目标。
Titus Halliwell of the Metropolitan Police
Service in London reckons stealing them is now the most “low-risk, high-reward”
crime. In the capital crafty thieves are shifting towards battery-powered angle
grinders, which get through the best locks in seconds (slow learners elsewhere
still seem to rely on primitive bolt-cutters).
伦敦大都会警察局的泰特斯·哈利韦尔认为，如今偷自行车已成为一种“低风险、高收益”的犯罪行为。在伦敦，狡猾的小偷正转向使用电动角磨机，这种工具能在几秒钟内切断最好的锁具。而其他地区反应较慢的小偷似乎仍然依赖原始的断线钳。
Many work in gangs that are practised at getting rid of stolen goods quickly. “You only need to steal four bikes a week and sell them for £250 each and you’re making £50k a year tax-free,” notes Mr Halliwell.
许多人结成团伙，能够快速处理赃物并转手卖出高价。哈利韦尔先生指出：“你每周只需偷4辆自行车，每辆转手卖250英镑，一年下来就能赚到5万英镑的无税收入。”
But the Merseyside example also shows how
things can be turned around comparatively quickly. Between July 2023 and July
2024 the pilot project saw reported thefts fall by 46% compared with the
previous year.
然而，默西塞德郡的例子也为我们带来了希望。在2023年7月至2024年7月期间，该试点项目报告的自行车失窃案件比上一年下降了46%。
Pippa Wilcox, the constable in charge, explains that as well as stopping suspicious riders the police have helped to get thousands of bikes across the city marked, either by retailers or through events at schools and workplaces. The aim is to make stolen bikes “too hot to handle”.
负责此项目的警官皮帕·威尔科克斯解释说，警方不仅拦截可疑骑行者进行检查，还积极与零售商合作，并在学校和工作场所举办活动为数千辆自行车做了标记。这些措施使得被盗自行车变得难以销赃，从而有效地遏制了自行车盗窃问题的蔓延。
