But say having someone present at an entrance for much of the day clearly cuts the number of shoplifting incidents. It's pretty reasonable for the police and town to push for that staffing if it is less costly than handling the displaced incidents.
They should hire private security guards, which as the article notes, reduce theft by 50%. Of course they should call the police when they catch a shoplifter. But they could be doing a lot more to keep people from shoplifting in the first place.
But it’s not like the shoplifter job is full and arresting existing ones opens up a spot.
More like there will be a continuous flux of people entering and leaving the habitual shoplifter role and to keep numbers low you have to keep enforcing.
Presumably the data shows that petty shop lifting is a fact of business for big box stores and that the level of petty shop lifting goes up and down with staffing levels on the store floor.
The shoplifters are still the ones to blame for the shoplifting, but it's not entirely unreasonable for the town to demand some level of performance from the store rather than happily providing expensive police to deal with a problem the store could handle with cheap employees.
It’s not better, but the underlying cause of the situation is entirely different, meaning the solution to the problem probably has to be different.
If it was organized crime, the likely answer is investigations and law enforcement presence. You would have specific centralized targets to take out and restore order.
If it’s instead a widespread epidemic of individual shoplifting, the issue is going to be social (or likely socioeconomic, in any reasonable guess) and probably requires a complex solution that is way out of the hands of what retailers can reliably put resources towards.
This is important information for the businesses, their shareholders, the communities they are located in, the politicians serving those communities and likely many other minor interested parties.
Yeah it sure is hard to believe that shoplifting is a non-issue when all the stores are reducing hours and putting merchandise behind an expensive to install and operate lock and key system.
Those are all valid points, about store security guards.
Some of what you said applies if the police are doing this work, also - the costs (to society), violence (putting police in harms way to protect store items), the d.a. (and lack of jail space for thieves). Not an easy problem to fix.
I think the largest part of the problem are actually the 2nd and 3rd order effects of retail theft. The shrinkage itself is only a small part of the cost.
Stores might attempt to address theft with preventative measures like locking things up, but this hurts the shopping experience for legitimate shoppers and encourages them to shop elsewhere, reducing sales at that store.
And what of the morale of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day?
Aside from the inconvenience of asking for the toothpaste cabinet to be unlocked, who wants to shop in a place where low-lifes are wandering around shoplifting in plain sight?
Staff shortages lead to messier, less organized stores, with less help and longer lines.
Overall this leads to a general degradation of the store, reduced sales, higher turnover, lower employee moral, and eventually closing the store outright in many cases.
And it's not fair to focus entirely on what the stores can do - this should be a job for the police and justice system. That's what we pay them for. And we don't allow (and wouldn't want) stores meting out their own justice either.
Is shoplifting actually increasing? Data trumps anecdotes.
Combatting it is easy, you need to pay someone to stand at the door and check receipts. But stores don't want to spend money on labor and instead just want to whine and claim there is nothing that can be done, we need to hire more police, etc. to make it someone else's problem.
I agree, but shoplifting is on the rise and becoming so prevalent that it is hurting normal law abiding citizens. I'm not sure what it is, but more should be done to deter shoplifting.
You’ve listened to a lot of misinformation about this topic. There aren’t huge gangs of shoplifters, and police force numbers have been growing in recent years. If anything is to blame for whatever increase there has been in shoplifting, it’s the stores who have tried their best to eliminate every bit of human staff.
This. Everyone agrees that retail theft is a problem, the dispute is whether to address it by looking at root causes or just to yell at people to get a third job and stop criming.
The guys post is interesting to sort of see the change in society.
Times were that the shop owner would physically stop shop lifters. Now we mostly have low wage employees in shops. Understandable that they don't want the risk of injury and liability so they don't stop shoplifters.
Ok, so we hire specialized employees ostensibly trained in security. But due to liability reasons they aren't allowed to physically stop shoplifters. That makes them basically useless.
Ok, so well there's always cops. But they have a similar cost benefit analysis as the other parties with the same result. It's not worth it to the individual cops to intervene. Why risk going viral over some druggie stealing $100 worth of stuff?
The DA/politicians have a similar calculus. Why spend $50k locking up some druggie because they stole $100 worth of stuff? And why risk the blowback of a police brutality incident?
There is also a theft problem, both from shop lifting and employees. Given the slim margins in a grocery store it can be the difference between staying around and not.
But say having someone present at an entrance for much of the day clearly cuts the number of shoplifting incidents. It's pretty reasonable for the police and town to push for that staffing if it is less costly than handling the displaced incidents.
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