Burglary in English law
Criminal offence in English law
Burglary is a statutory offence in England and Wales.
In the three years to 2018 burglary reports in England and Wales rose by 6% while criminal charges for burglary fell by 33%. The number of police officers available to investigate burglary and other crimes also fell during that time.
Statute
The offence of burglary is now defined by section 9 of the Theft Act 1968 which now reads:
Burglary with intent to rape
Section 9(2) originally referred to the offence of raping any woman in the building or part of the building in question. The words "raping any person" were substituted for the words "raping any woman" on 3 November 1994. This was consequential on the changes to the definition of rape made by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The words "or raping any person" were in turn repealed on 1 May 2004. The offence of burglary with intent to rape was replaced by the offence of trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence, contrary to section 63 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
Amendments to ss 9(3) and (4)
Sections 9(3) and (4) were substituted by the Criminal Justice Act 1991 on 1 October 1992.
Elements of the offence
"Enters"
Although physical evidence of entry is not normally difficult to obtain, it can be difficult on occasions to decide whether an entry has occurred in law.
“Burglary in English law” enters the record as criminal offence in English law. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Burglary, English and Criminal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Burglary in English law” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Burglary, English and Criminal provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4998660. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018, 1968, 1994 and 2004.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burglary in English law” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.