UK Shoplifting Epidemic All Time High

The British Retail Consortium has estimated shoplifting will cost retailers around £1 billion this year, pushing prices higher and contributing to the cost of living crisis and inflation. In this latest post we look at the UK shoplifting epidemic.

The Co-op has reported that, in the six months up to June 2023, the highest ever level of retail crime has been recorded, including incidents of shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. Stores have recorded around 1000 incidents every day and claim that police failed to respond to 71% of serious retail crime reports. Management were now considering whether it was safe for their staff and commercially viable to keep some stores open.

In one Co-op store the manager and shop staff had recently faced threats of violence from criminals armed with knives, razors, screwdrivers, hammers and needles. Some have said that “it feels like shoplifting has been decriminalised” with shoplifters threatening staff and brazening looting whatever they like.

The Cost of Shoplifting

Theft from UK retail outlets has escalated by over 25% in the past year. The Office for National Statistics reports that 365,164 shoplifting offences were recorded by police in the year to June - up 25% on the previous 12 months. But industry professionals estimate the actual number of shoplifting incidents were likely to be 15 to 21 times higher than these figures.

While some might assume that since shoplifting is a common issue in retail stores the costs incurred, due to stolen inventory, would somehow be absorbed. But the reality is that store owners need to increase their prices to cover the costs involved. And these costs are not simply limited to the value of the stolen products.

When a store owner loses products to thieves they have not only lost the potential profit they would have made had those products been sold. They have lost the entire value of the stolen products and this must then be passed on to consumers via higher shop prices. Grocery stores, for example, operate on very low profit margins, possibly as low as 1%. So products that cost the retailer £100 to buy might be sold for only £101. This means the retailer must recover £100 for every £1 worth of shoplifted inventory. These higher costs will typically be distributed across the pricing for the stores products.

Losing products and profit to shoplifters means stores need to sell more to recover their losses. In order to sell more they often need to engage in more promotion, advertising and marketing - all of which incur additional costs.

Anti shoplifting measures and protecting shop staff require significant additional costs, borne by retail outlets. And these additional operational costs inevitably result in higher product prices for consumers. Some of the biggest UK brands have resorted to employing the services of professional security organisations to protect their staff and stores after giving up on getting help from the authorities. These private security firms, such as TM-Eye, will send collected evidence directly to magistrates and endeavour to achieve a private prosecution, if possible. It is estimated that retailers are already spending £30 million a year on security, private police forces and legal services and these costs are inevitably passed on to consumers via higher prices.

Price increases, due to the impact of shoplifting, are contributing to the cost of living crisis and the level of inflation. But these additional costs are also forcing some retailers to close their stores, depriving communities of much needed nearby outlets and destroying the livelihoods of retail workers.

UK Shoplifting Hotspots

While the UK shoplifting epidemic is affecting all areas of the UK some regions and cities are shoplifting hotspots. A recent ITV news report highlighted Leeds as a shoplifting hotspot but the whole of the UK North East is recognised for being hardest hit by the explosion in shoplifting crime.

The British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) has described the recently recorded 27% increase in retail crime and £2.8 billion loss due to customer theft over the last financial year as “the tip of the iceberg”. Opinions vary regarding the underlying cause of this massive crime escalation but it is noted that regions most affected are amongst the most deprived in the UK.

Research has demonstrated direct links between soaring levels of retail crime and the cost of living crisis that’s massively increasing household bills, including what people are paying at the tills for their routine shopping. Large proportions of the UK’s population are struggling to afford basic, essential everyday items.

The Northeast of the UK has the highest rates of poverty with Middlesborough, Hartlepool and Newcastle Upon Tyne in the top 25 UK shoplifting hotspots. But the impact of the cost of living crisis is nationwide with many people in all areas of the UK reporting how their essential bills and living expenses have increased astronomically over the past 12 months.

Who are the Shoplifters?

Sadly, children as young as seven years old are stealing food to feed themselves or their siblings and parents are stealing food and baby formula to feed their kids. These unfortunate, desperate people are shoplifters, effectively forced into criminality because they can’t afford the spiraling high prices in our shops.

In one reported case a young mother of three children under the age of 12, living in London, describes how her family is basically subsisting on large batches of rice and pasta that she cooks in bulk to save on energy costs and then puts in the fridge to be eaten cold. She`s ashamed to admit how she adds some items such as cheese, blueberries and chicken to her shopping basket, for her kids, which she doesn’t pay for. While she acknowledges how this is bad she says she has no choice if she can’t get to the food bank. She describes how she is in arrears with her rent, her electricity bill, gas bill and credit cards and is often left with only around £10 to feed herself and her three children for four days. She says that if she didn’t shoplift they would all go hungry.

At the other end of the shoplifting criminal spectrum there are organised criminal gangs, taking advantage of the cost of living crisis by stealing products they know they can quickly sell-on to desperate people at more affordable prices. Organised shoplifting gangs are increasing year-on-year, enabled by both non-existent law enforcement and a widespread demand for affordable products.

While the greatest number of shoplifters were previously amateur opportunists, often stealing to support their drug habits, this is changing. We are now seeing increasing numbers of desperate people forced into criminality by high prices alongside criminal gangs of increasingly brazen, threatening criminals carrying out raids on shops described by some as “organised looting”.

Violence Toward Shopworkers

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has reported that incidents of violence toward retail workers have skyrocketed from around 455 incidents per day in 2019/20 to more than 850 a day last year. In Bristol violence toward shop workers increased by 53% in a year while incidents of theft from stores in the city increased by 36%, way in excess of the 27% seen across other ‘core cities’.

The BRC has pointed out how the nature of these crimes is changing. They note how perpetrators are becoming increasingly bold and many retailers are reporting apparent links to organised crime. While incidents involving violence and abuse, including racial and sexual abuse, physical assaults and threats with weapons, were already ‘disturbingly high’ this past year has seen a massive escalation in these horrendous attacks.

In September 2023 a Bristol shop worker was punched in the face by a suspected shoplifter. The individual became aggressive when he was being ejected from the store for suspected shoplifting. He lashed out and injured the retail worker.

In Southsea, near Portsmouth, a man threatened staff with a screwdriver before stealing more than £200 from the till. The following day a man entered the same store armed with a hammer and took money from the till. Just ten minutes later a similar incident was reported at another nearby store.

In April 2023 a man armed with a fake gun threatened staff at a Premier store in Rotherham. He demanded money and hit a shop worker on the head, causing minor injuries. But the plucky victim managed to push his assailant out of the store. The perpetrator was caught, charged and jailed.

And in Cornwall two shopkeepers have been praised for their “astonishing resilience” after facing up to a robber who threatened to pull a gun on them. The criminal had walked into the Spar store and post office in Boscastle, North Cornwall and asked the two shopkeepers to open the till. They asked the criminal: “is this a joke” and he told them he “had a gun in his pocket”. The shopkeepers managed to press their alarm button and told the assailant that police were now on the way but the criminal then attempted to gain entry into the Post Office area where the lady behind the counter bravely managed to block his progress. As the criminal left the store a member of staff went outside and sat with him outside where he described how he was facing homelessness and had been suffering from mental health issues.

Its not only shops that are suffering in this crime epidemic. The Forecourt Crime Index, which collates reports of no means of payment (NMoP) and drive-off incidents at garages, is at an all time high. In one recent case a driver has been jailed for ten “making off without paying” offences at garages across Hampshire.

What Retailers are Doing

Some retailers (such as the Coop) are resorting to an Argos style of retailing wherein some products aren’t being made available from the shop shelves. Instead they are replaced by placeholder containers that require shop staff to retrieve items from their store in response to customer requests.

Another measure that’s increasingly used by some of the UK’s biggest retail brands is the employment of what are effectively private police forces. While conventional security services provide patrols these newly arising services include private detectives and highly experienced ex-police officers who have the skills necessary to monitor and investigate criminals, gather evidence, approach magistrates and provide everything needed to achieve successful prosecutions.

TM-Eye is one of these firms, employing over 100 ‘bobbies’ who wear uniforms with stab proof vests. They also have around 28 plain clothes officers who mingle with shoppers. When they identify and arrest shoplifters the suspects are handed over to the police. But if adequate evidence has been collected they will send it to a magistrates court with a request for a private prosecution.

A number of the UK’s leading retailers have so far provided around £600,000 to fund a UK police operation called Pegasus. This operation will enable police to examine a huge amount of CCTV data showing suspected shoplifters using facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition is also used by the Facewatch system that will send an alert immediately if a subject of interest is recognised. The system is the only shared national facial recognition database but some have raised concerns regarding personal data security.

Another measure adopted by some stores to deter violence and abuse toward staff is to issue all customer facing personnel with body worn camera systems and train them in how to use the cameras effectively.

Other primary recommendations for retail store security include the installation of low cost retail security mirrors. These simple devices are easily installed by anyone with basic DIY skills and help those working in shops to keep a watchful eye on their customers.

Another useful recommendation is to always meet and greet every customer entering the store. Shoplifters refer to the “three to five second rule” which basically means that if a shop doesn’t interact with a customer quickly then there is time to grab some products and scarper. Greeting shoppers immediately as they enter a store can often be enough to deter potential shoplifters.

Assessing the internal layout of a store and “crime mapping” the areas most susceptible to theft is another useful precaution. Steps can then be taken to mitigate risks by reconsidering the shop layout, changing the locations of certain products and targeting areas with CCTV and retail security mirrors.

Electronically tagging valuable products is another widely used and highly effective tactic. Installing a security accredited anti-theft terminal (and tagging system) at a store entrance tells potential shoplifters the store and its products are protected.

Ensuring shop staff are never alone in a store is another powerful and important precaution. Thieves like to target stores where staff numbers are low and will often use distraction to divert the shop assistant’s attention while goods are stolen from the shelves by criminal associates.

The UK Government’s Response

Although the UK government has acknowledged more needs to be done to combat the UK shoplifting epidemic there is reluctance to attribute the escalation to the current cost of living crisis. Some retailers have even claimed that the almost complete absence of law enforcement has effectively decriminalised shoplifting. Asda chairman Lord Stuart Rose has said that shoplifting has effectively been decriminalised thanks to a lack of action. It has been said that politicians often focus on the symptoms instead of looking at the root causes and dealing with the poverty issues and inequalities in society which are clearly a factor in the current crime epidemic.

The Anti Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014 introduced a threshold of £200 that basically enabled anyone caught stealing goods worth under this threshold to plead guilty by post, or go to magistrates court. This resulted in criminals exploiting the threshold by only stealing goods up to this value and only around half of those caught would ever pay their fines. Some police forces, such as Nottinghamshire police, have even stated they were only able to investigate shoplifting if violence was involved.

More recently the government has said that police forces were expected to take all reported crimes seriously, investigations were to be carried out and, where appropriate, offenders should be taken to court. But in practice police forces need to carefully consider where their limited resources are allocated so investigating a minor offence, such as £50 worth of goods stolen from a store, tends to be very low on the priority list. But when this is happening up to ten times a day, every day in some stores, the impact on the retailer can be disastrous.

The government repeatedly claims that we now have a record numbers of police officers. In April 2023 there were 149,572 police officers in England and Wales, including part time staff, and this figure exceeds the previous 2010 peak. The government appears to have fulfilled its promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers, but it must be remembered that this was carried out after police numbers had been reduced by 20,000 between 2010 and 2019.

Although the current total number of police officers now exceeds the previous 2010 peak by a few thousand it has been pointed out that numbers have not remained in step with population growth which has seen the number of people in the UK increase by 7%.

Another significant policing issue is the ongoing loss of experienced officers. There are now significantly fewer senior full-time police officers than there were in 2010 and currently around a third of all police officers in the UK have fewer than five years experience. The Public Accounts Committee has linked declining levels of experience in the force with the government`s drive to recruit new officers. The apparent lack of experience in the police force has also been clearly linked to declining police performance.

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