The Many Faces of Shoplifting

Goods valued at more than $35 million are stolen from retailers every day, according to the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP). A record $37.14 billion in merchandise was lost last year to clerical errors, employee theft and shoplifting, according to preliminary results of the most recent National Retail Security Survey.

Logic would seem to indicate that, the longer hard economic times last, the greater the likelihood that more people will resort to stealing merchandise. Staggering job losses, plummeting home values, vanishing investments and rising food prices can conspire to drive consumers to take drastic measures.

But that’s generally not the case. While people occasionally steal to cover the necessities, many loss prevention professionals insist this type of behavior shift remains very much the exception.

A diverse group
According to the annual National Retail Security Survey, inventory shrinkage rates have remained relatively constant since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. Preliminary results of the 2011 survey, based on anonymous responses from 124 retailers, indicated that approximately one-third of inventory shrinkage involved shoplifting.

Shrinkage rates have proven to be higher during boom years: In 2010, inventory shrinkage was 1.58 percent of sales, compared with 1.59 percent in 2005, 1.8 percent in 2001 and 1.95 percent in 1994.

“The more retail volume and shoppers you have, the more shoplifting,” says Joe LaRocca, NRF’s senior asset protection advisor. “You have more people in the store and more people are going to take the opportunity.”

LaRocca says it is important to understand the difference between amateur and professional shoplifters. Organized retail crime (ORC) professionals often work in sophisticated rings and can steal a few thousand dollars worth of merchandise in minutes and then resell it for profit on the black market. While ORC can have a big impact, it is easy to identify the motive — raising cash.

Amateurs, however, come in all shapes and sizes and “steal for all kinds of reasons,” LaRocca says. “They might want to lash out, they might think they need the item and many just steal out of opportunity.”

Rachel Shteir, author of The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, says there isn’t much solid information when it comes to the mindset of a shoplifter. “There really isn’t a specific profile,” she says. “In fact, newer research tells us that more men than women may take part in shoplifting.”

While popular belief would lead many to assume that shoplifting is a crime rooted in economic need, Shteir says relatively few people steal because they need the item or money. “People would often talk about compensatory things,” she explains, “that some way they felt they had been wronged by someone or some company.”

That’s not to completely dismiss economic conditions as contributing factor, she says, but “I think where the recession kicks in is that people feel their dollar is not going as far as it did and they feel they are entitled to such things.”

Barbara Staib, director of communications for NASP, says the sluggish economy could produce a feeling of hopelessness among some consumers, particularly those who are unemployed or under-employed. While the majority will react in other ways, some people will resort to shoplifting.
“It’s not about being poor or that they need something,” Staib says. “It’s the [economic] stress and uncertainty.”

Entitlement issues
NASP estimates as many as one in every 11 Americans shoplifts. NASP further estimates that a shoplifter is apprehended just over 2 percent of the time — and even when caught, they are only turned over to the police half the time.

“There isn’t much empirical data,” Staib says. “The fact that so many people don’t get caught and so many don’t care contributes to the problem.”

She says that while professional shoplifters tend to steal higher-value items and have higher per-incident theft averages, amateur shoplifters take a bigger bite out of retailers because they steal so frequently.

With approximately 27 million such shoplifters, the cumulative total can run into the billions. “One person stealing $75 in merchandise per day most of the year is far more than any one professional will steal,” Staib says.

Peter Berlin, retail theft consultant and NASP founder, says a down economy can push all types of people into shoplifting, even the elderly. Inflation and rising health care prices can have a serious impact on people with fixed incomes, and Berlin says there can be entitlement issues with people who may have worked their entire life only to be left to struggle financially in their golden years.

“They feel things are out of control and they might buy a bottle of aspirin and take a bottle of aspirin, just to even things out,” Berlin says. “Shoplifting is about getting something for nothing. No one sets out to become a shoplifter.”

Shoplifting, Berlin says, is often a sign of deeper underlying problems ranging from depression and anxiety to feelings of low self-worth. When a person gets away with stealing an item, it delivers temporary relief from the problem and provides a sense of power.

“Shoplifting is a symptom of their … inability to cope with whatever is going on in their life,” he says.

Taking opportunities
Security consultant Chris McGoey says that the state of the economy does impact shoplifting rates. When he worked in the field earlier in his career, McGoey arrested more than 1,500 people for shoplifting, and says that the reasons ran the gamut from stealing luxury items simply because people couldn’t afford them to stealing suits for job interviews.

McGoey doesn’t stand with those who believe that a large number of shoplifters are otherwise honest people: By nature, he says, they are “people that will take advantage of others at every turn — and it makes it easier because a [retail store represents] a faceless, big corporation.”

As part of an effort to combat the perception that shoplifting merely skims a few dollars from deep corporate pockets, Staib says NASP runs programs to educate shoplifters about how their actions harm everyone — that it forces consumers to pay higher prices to cover the losses and increases the invasiveness and inconvenience of security measures. It can result in the loss of local and state taxes, which places added burdens on the police and local courts; emotional hardship for the families of those arrested for shoplifting; and the corruption of youths who see that dishonesty is not effectively addressed at its most fundamental levels.

The fact that many continue to view shoplifting as a “victimless” crime further perpetuates the problem, Staib says.

“They don’t think they’re hurting anyone,” she says. “They know the store is making more money than they do, the CEO is making millions, and they don’t see the harm.”