It came as police in Lewisham released a photograph of a terrifying 3ft ‘zombie killer’ knife (pictured) officers seized after stopping a car in the London borough

Police are failing to catch four out of five muggers and burglars, official figures show.

A staggering 86 per cent of robberies and 78 per cent of burglaries went unsolved last year.

The revelation about the shocking number of offenders getting away with their crimes came a day after it was revealed that two elderly women suffered broken necks – with one later dying – after being viciously attacked by thieves.

As ministers faced mounting pressure to get a grip on a violent crime wave engulfing Britain:

A millionaire dentist and his wife spoke of their terror after machete-waving thieves broke into their home in Bowdon, Cheshire, and threatened to kill their children;

A teenage boy and a woman were hit with shotgun pellets after a drive-by shooting in Brixton, South London;

Police in Lewisham, South-East London, released a chilling image of a 3ft-long zombie knife they seized;

The chairman of the Criminal Bar Association declared that the criminal justice system was ‘broken’.

The latest Home Office statistics show that 81,848 police investigations of muggings were shelved in the year to September 2017 without the culprit being found. This is 14 per cent more than in 2015.

The number of unsolved burglaries has also increased by a quarter in the past two years, with police closing the file on 203,703 domestic burglaries in the year to September 2017, compared to 153,742 in 2015.

Half of robberies are also not being solved, with the number of cases being dropped rising by a third since 2015.

Last year just one in eight robberies ended up with anyone being charged.

The number of investigations into possession of a weapon being dropped by police has increased by 150 per cent in the past two years.

A millionaire dentist and his wife spoke of their terror after machete-waving thieves broke into their home in Bowdon, Cheshire, and threatened to kill their children (pictured)

The figures also show that just one in six offences of violence with injury resulted in anyone being charged last year. Police were also unable to solve nearly three-quarters of car thefts and two-thirds of criminal damage cases in the year to September 2017.

The number of shoplifting investigations being closed without any suspect identified has also risen by a third in the past two years, with 44 per cent of recorded crimes unsolved. Overall, police forces are closing the file on nearly half of all recorded crimes after failing to identify a suspect. Of the 4.6 million crimes reported in the year to September 2017, 47 per cent went unsolved.

It came as police in Lewisham released a photograph of a terrifying 3ft ‘zombie killer’ knife officers seized after stopping a car in the London borough. Two men were arrested.

Yesterday Angela Rafferty QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, praised the Daily Mail for highlighting the crisis. She said: ‘The UK is seeing the direct consequences of a failure to invest in our children and young people from early prevention, intervention and diversion schemes and the corresponding failures to invest in the criminal justice system, which is left to pick up the pieces.

‘The criminal justice system is broken. Notwithstanding this the Ministry of Justice is proposing further £600 million cuts over the next two years. Unsurprisingly, public faith in the criminal justice system is at a low ebb.’

Labour’s policing and crime spokeman, Louise Haigh, said: ‘These staggering figures reveal that the Government is losing control in the fight to keep our streets safe. Savage cuts have left the police simply unable to properly investigate some crimes, leaving our communities exposed and criminals free to re-offend.’