Mall of Shame?

Having your picture posted all over a mall may be great if you’re the employee of the month. You aren’t likely to be thrilled, however, if the photo is there because you’ve been convicted of shoplifting from one of the mall’s stores.

That’s just what happened during the recent holiday shopping season at the Staten Island Mall, the largest shopping center in New York City’s smallest borough.

Concern about shoplifting always rises when the economic climate is depressed. Add in the fact that shoplifting also increases during the holiday selling season and there was a double-whammy facing retailers in the final quarter of 2008.

Staten Island Mall made the front pages of the local tabloids when a woman who had been barred from the mall was charged with stealing designer sunglasses valued at more than $1,000. It turns out that the woman was the subject of a February 2005 “barring notice” obtained by mall management.

In addition, her mother once fell into a decorative fountain at the mall while trying to elude security personnel who suspected her of shoplifting. Mother and daughter were alleged to have used, on more than one occasion, shopping bags and totes lined with duct tape, aluminum foil and foam to slip items past electronic article surveillance sensors at store entrances.

All of this was too much for district attorney Daniel Donovan. “Shoplifting is not a victimless crime,” he says. “It impacts every business owner and customer, resulting in decreased store profits and higher prices for consumers.”

What Donovan did was arrange to have digital advertising signs at the mall display photographs of persons who had been convicted more than once of shoplifting at the mall. The anti-shoplifting campaign which began a week before Thanksgiving and ran through the end of the year. It included a 15-second message featuring mug shots of the shoplifters that ran every six minutes on 11 electronic billboards, in rotation with pitches for merchandise, movies and medical services.

Dose of reality
Using only photos (no names or other identification) was a conscious decision, Donovan says. “We took the effort not to stigmatize these people.” Donovan declined to use his office’s or the mall’s websites for the campaign because of the worldwide and almost timeless reach of the Internet. Still, he says, “the message is clear — you will be prosecuted” if you steal and the intent is to “offer a dose of reality to anyone contemplating shoplifting.”

The D.A. says no taxpayer money was used in the effort; it was funded through revenues seized from criminals as part of his office’s asset forfeiture program. No mall or merchant funds were used, either, and mall manager James Easley appeared at the launch of the campaign, as did representatives from anchor stores such as Macy’s, Sears and JCPenney.