ALMOST one million offences are being 'screened out' after some police forces set targets to investigate fewer than half of reported crimes.

It means the cases are being dropped with little or no investigation, according to reports.

Channel 4's Dispatches found that many offences are logged and reported but never passed to an officer for investigation.

The programme uncovered figures that showed "nearly a million" crimes are treated this way.

The data from West Yorkshire it was 46.53 per cent of crimes there were reported to have been screened out.

Figures from other forces include 32.89 per cent in Warwickshire, 40.35 per cent in Bedfordshire and 39.84 per cent for Greater Manchester Police.

For the Metropolitan Police it was nearly 30 per cent, according to the research.

Stats show there were around 438,000 burglaries in England and Wales in 2017 and that just three per cent were solved.

MPs told The Telegraph police were “downgrading” serious crimes and said victims were faced with a “postcode lottery”.

Marian Fitzgerald, visiting professor of criminology, University of Kent, told the programme: "It varies from force to force and some of them seem to be more gung-ho about screening out than others, but typically things like theft, criminal damage, vandalism, thefts from cars, interfering with cars.

"Those sorts of fairly commonplace offences, those are the ones that seem to be screened out fastest."

A Home Office spokesman said: "We expect the police to take all reports of crime seriously, to investigate and to bring the offenders to court so that they can receive appropriate punishment.

"The Government remains alert to changes in trends and new methods used by criminals and we will continue to work with the police, industry and others to consider the evidence and what more can be done to prevent these crimes taking place.

"The deployment of resources is a matter for chief constables and police and crime commissioners."