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https://www.theguardian.com/society...ish-shoplifting-crisis-as-seen-from-the-tills
In Britain, shop thefts have more than doubled in the past six years, reaching 8m in 2022. We spent a day talking to shopkeepers in Manchester, where raids on the shelves are a regular occurrence.
...Chorlton has a less wholesome side that is best illustrated by its branch of Boots, tucked inside a dismal 70s precinct earmarked for demolition at the end of the year. Want some makeup? You will have to ask for it. Every lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, blusher – everything – is kept in the stockroom, out of public sight and reach. Why? “It keeps getting stolen,” shrugs a shop assistant. “We’ve not had it out for months now.” The thieves had learned when deliveries arrived and would clear them out within minutes.
This small corner of Manchester is no anomaly. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) estimates that there were 8m “theft incidents” in British shops last year, costing £953m. The BRC says shop theft is a “long-term rising trend”, with incidents more than doubling since 2016-17. Meanwhile, reports abound of increasing desperation among customers stealing to feed their children – claims promoted by opposition politicians, but strongly contested by many retailers.
Further down the road, Claire Liu, who runs a DIY and household store, has also been busy with her laminator. “THIEVES,” reads the sign in her window, above a photograph of a man with glasses and gelled hair and the message: “How pathetic to steal a pod of fish food worth £1.49. I hope your fishes are all doing well.” Liu does report thieves to the police, but complains that only the most prolific seem to face justice. She is still smarting from an incident last year when a woman came in and stole a box of vapes worth £70 – “a whole day’s wage for me or my partner”.
Claire Liu has installed security cameras at her DIY shop. She lost the equivalent of a day’s pay to a theft last year.
Shoplifting offences recorded by UK police have remained more or less static over the past decade, at about 300,000 each year. The gulf between those numbers and the 8m incidents logged by retailers suggests not even 4% of shoplifting crimes are reported to the police. Prosecutions are plummeting. In the year to June 2022, 21,279 people were prosecuted in England and Wales for shoplifting, down from 80,352 a decade earlier.
“There remains a perception among some retailers that some police forces do not regard shop theft as a ‘real’ crime, particularly if it is under £200 in value (often perceived as the lower limit before action is taken),” says the BRC's 2023 Crime Survey. “A perception that nothing will happen is probably held not just among retail staff but among repeat offenders, who are a significant proportion of the total, and who are willing to take the risk. There is a strong belief among some of them – supported by ad hoc reports – that even if they appear in court multiple times, the sentence will be so light it will hardly make a difference.”
Should any of Chorlton’s shopkeepers pop into Manchester magistrates court, they are unlikely to emerge in an optimistic frame of mind.
Back in Chorlton, the manager of Quality Save, a low-price convenience store next to Boots, is fighting a losing battle against an ever-more-brazen band of shoplifters. “They’re in and out all day, every day, and it’s definitely got worse since Covid,” says the manager with a sigh, her eyes darting down the aisles. The day before, she caught four – an average tally.
She divides shoplifters into three categories. Most problematic are the “prolific thieves” – the regulars who waltz in and out taking the highest-value items to sell on to fund their drug or alcohol habits. “We know their names. They are all banned, but they don’t care,” she says. They go for laundry capsules, coffee, protein powder, booze, meat; anything they can fence quickly and lucratively. Expensive but light is the ideal steal.
Then there are the “compulsive shoplifters”. One was caught the previous day with a random collection of loot in her bag, including a gold-plated figurine of Rodney from Only Fools and Horses (£8.99). “She was incredibly upset – she didn’t even know why she had taken it,” says the manager. “I can imagine her living in a house piled high with stuff. A hoarder.”
The saddest group, the newest cohort, are the “regular” shoppers who simply can’t afford everything they need: “They’re the ones who only put half their goods in their basket and hide the rest in their coats or bags.” They are mortified to be caught, telling staff they can’t make ends meet. The manager insists their number is rising, contrary to the views of the retail experts. She recalls an “older gentleman” who was rumbled the week before for stealing coffee. “But not a big jar, like the drug addicts take. It was the very smallest jar – clearly for himself.”
All of the employees to whom I speak, who work for chains in Chorlton, say they are instructed not to chase after shoplifters and certainly not to intervene physically. At the Shell garage, one worker says they could theoretically lock someone in the shop, but that carries its own dangers. The bigger stores rely on CCTV to catch thieves retrospectively, handing footage to the police if and when they have time, in the hope it will help officers identify serial offenders.
At a branch of one of the major supermarkets on Barlow Moor Road, workers seem at the end of their tether. They have resorted to starting a WhatsApp group to share intelligence with other traders. Shoplifting is constant and blatant, complains one. “See that flat over there?” he says, pointing across the road. “There’s a guy in there who comes in here literally every day and just treats the shop like his own personal larder, pinching whatever he fancies for every single meal. Police don’t want to know.”
His colleague recalls going into a nearby pub for a mid-morning breakfast, only to be offered joints of meat – stolen from his own store that morning – from a succession of people going from table to table. Meat is a big target for supermarket thieves. “There’s been times when we put out a delivery, turn our backs and literally the whole chiller has been emptied,” he says. There were reports this week that some Marks & Spencer food stores are now displaying a single steak at a time. Despite most shops telling me that they have noticed a rise in shoplifting in Chorlton, Greater Manchester police says reported incidents are down. In the first five months of 2023, the force recorded 73 shoplifting offences in Chorlton, compared with 101 in the same period last year.
In Britain, shop thefts have more than doubled in the past six years, reaching 8m in 2022. We spent a day talking to shopkeepers in Manchester, where raids on the shelves are a regular occurrence.
...Chorlton has a less wholesome side that is best illustrated by its branch of Boots, tucked inside a dismal 70s precinct earmarked for demolition at the end of the year. Want some makeup? You will have to ask for it. Every lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, blusher – everything – is kept in the stockroom, out of public sight and reach. Why? “It keeps getting stolen,” shrugs a shop assistant. “We’ve not had it out for months now.” The thieves had learned when deliveries arrived and would clear them out within minutes.
This small corner of Manchester is no anomaly. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) estimates that there were 8m “theft incidents” in British shops last year, costing £953m. The BRC says shop theft is a “long-term rising trend”, with incidents more than doubling since 2016-17. Meanwhile, reports abound of increasing desperation among customers stealing to feed their children – claims promoted by opposition politicians, but strongly contested by many retailers.
Further down the road, Claire Liu, who runs a DIY and household store, has also been busy with her laminator. “THIEVES,” reads the sign in her window, above a photograph of a man with glasses and gelled hair and the message: “How pathetic to steal a pod of fish food worth £1.49. I hope your fishes are all doing well.” Liu does report thieves to the police, but complains that only the most prolific seem to face justice. She is still smarting from an incident last year when a woman came in and stole a box of vapes worth £70 – “a whole day’s wage for me or my partner”.
Claire Liu has installed security cameras at her DIY shop. She lost the equivalent of a day’s pay to a theft last year.
Shoplifting offences recorded by UK police have remained more or less static over the past decade, at about 300,000 each year. The gulf between those numbers and the 8m incidents logged by retailers suggests not even 4% of shoplifting crimes are reported to the police. Prosecutions are plummeting. In the year to June 2022, 21,279 people were prosecuted in England and Wales for shoplifting, down from 80,352 a decade earlier.
“There remains a perception among some retailers that some police forces do not regard shop theft as a ‘real’ crime, particularly if it is under £200 in value (often perceived as the lower limit before action is taken),” says the BRC's 2023 Crime Survey. “A perception that nothing will happen is probably held not just among retail staff but among repeat offenders, who are a significant proportion of the total, and who are willing to take the risk. There is a strong belief among some of them – supported by ad hoc reports – that even if they appear in court multiple times, the sentence will be so light it will hardly make a difference.”
Should any of Chorlton’s shopkeepers pop into Manchester magistrates court, they are unlikely to emerge in an optimistic frame of mind.
Back in Chorlton, the manager of Quality Save, a low-price convenience store next to Boots, is fighting a losing battle against an ever-more-brazen band of shoplifters. “They’re in and out all day, every day, and it’s definitely got worse since Covid,” says the manager with a sigh, her eyes darting down the aisles. The day before, she caught four – an average tally.
She divides shoplifters into three categories. Most problematic are the “prolific thieves” – the regulars who waltz in and out taking the highest-value items to sell on to fund their drug or alcohol habits. “We know their names. They are all banned, but they don’t care,” she says. They go for laundry capsules, coffee, protein powder, booze, meat; anything they can fence quickly and lucratively. Expensive but light is the ideal steal.
Then there are the “compulsive shoplifters”. One was caught the previous day with a random collection of loot in her bag, including a gold-plated figurine of Rodney from Only Fools and Horses (£8.99). “She was incredibly upset – she didn’t even know why she had taken it,” says the manager. “I can imagine her living in a house piled high with stuff. A hoarder.”
The saddest group, the newest cohort, are the “regular” shoppers who simply can’t afford everything they need: “They’re the ones who only put half their goods in their basket and hide the rest in their coats or bags.” They are mortified to be caught, telling staff they can’t make ends meet. The manager insists their number is rising, contrary to the views of the retail experts. She recalls an “older gentleman” who was rumbled the week before for stealing coffee. “But not a big jar, like the drug addicts take. It was the very smallest jar – clearly for himself.”
All of the employees to whom I speak, who work for chains in Chorlton, say they are instructed not to chase after shoplifters and certainly not to intervene physically. At the Shell garage, one worker says they could theoretically lock someone in the shop, but that carries its own dangers. The bigger stores rely on CCTV to catch thieves retrospectively, handing footage to the police if and when they have time, in the hope it will help officers identify serial offenders.
At a branch of one of the major supermarkets on Barlow Moor Road, workers seem at the end of their tether. They have resorted to starting a WhatsApp group to share intelligence with other traders. Shoplifting is constant and blatant, complains one. “See that flat over there?” he says, pointing across the road. “There’s a guy in there who comes in here literally every day and just treats the shop like his own personal larder, pinching whatever he fancies for every single meal. Police don’t want to know.”
His colleague recalls going into a nearby pub for a mid-morning breakfast, only to be offered joints of meat – stolen from his own store that morning – from a succession of people going from table to table. Meat is a big target for supermarket thieves. “There’s been times when we put out a delivery, turn our backs and literally the whole chiller has been emptied,” he says. There were reports this week that some Marks & Spencer food stores are now displaying a single steak at a time. Despite most shops telling me that they have noticed a rise in shoplifting in Chorlton, Greater Manchester police says reported incidents are down. In the first five months of 2023, the force recorded 73 shoplifting offences in Chorlton, compared with 101 in the same period last year.
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