A lack of arrests and convictions has led to shoplifting becoming endemic with the Co-op losing £40m in first six months of the year - Andrew Vine

He wasn’t in the least bit furtive or hurried in what he was doing or how he left, just supremely confident he’d get away with it, which he did.

Those of us who watched him exchanged glances and shakes of the head, and our resigned response tells a story. We may be disturbed at the criminality around us, but we’re no longer surprised. It has become a fact of everyday life.

To that thief, and all the others who are stealing hundreds of millions from retailers, shoplifting is now as normalised as going to the checkouts to pay for what’s in our baskets or trollies is for the rest of us.

There can’t be a supermarket anywhere in Yorkshire where this sort of casual theft isn’t happening every day, leaving both staff and customers grappling with the dilemma of whether to challenge it and by doing so risk assault and injury.

Barriers have gone up in supermarkets, and receipts have to be scanned to open gates from the self-checkouts, but these measures are not stemming the tide of theft.

If anybody doubts the scale of this epidemic of lawlessness, they need only look at the shoplifting figures from the Office for National Statistics, which recorded 402,482 offences in the year to September 2023. That figure was up by a third from the 304,459 in the previous 12 months.

Meanwhile, arrest and conviction rates have plummeted. No wonder the thief in Morrisons wasn’t rushing to make his getaway. The chances of him getting caught and punished are next to zero.

Last week brought another shocking measure of how endemic shoplifting is now, when the Co-op revealed it has lost almost £40m to thefts in the first six months of this year.

The manager of one of its shops in Leeds, David Brook, told how his store suffered at least 20 thefts a week, with his colleagues being subjected to violence and abuse. Shoplifters are carrying knives or hammers and even, revoltingly, threatening to infect staff with diseases such as hepatitis by displaying open wounds.

So far this year, the Co-op has spent £18m on fortified kiosks and body cameras to protect staff.

The notion of shop workers having to wear cameras – until recently the preserve of police officers – as a deterrent to assault is a shocking indictment of how out-of-control shoplifting is.

Shop staff I know tell me they are under instructions not to challenge thieves, to minimise the risk of being assaulted. But even if they hadn’t been told that, few would try anyway, understandably unwilling to compromise their safety.

The government’s plan to tackle retail crime involves police prioritising attending any incident of violence or where a shoplifter has been detained.

That is welcome, but flawed. Must somebody be attacked for officers to turn up? And who is supposed to detain the criminal?

There have to be doubts about the ability of police to respond, given the scale of shoplifting.

On the same day that the Co-op revealed it has lost £40m, the chairman of the South Yorkshire Police Federation told The Yorkshire Post that officer numbers are so stretched they are unable to respond to every crime reported to them. That picture will be mirrored in Yorkshire’s three other forces and across the country.

Police shortages inevitably play a part in feeding a vicious cycle in which shoplifters continue to steal with impunity, knowing there is little likelihood of being caught.

The government must do much more if this cycle is to be broken. Many more police officers need to be recruited and deployed on the streets, and backlogs in the criminal justice system resolved so thieves can be swiftly put before the courts and punished.

Attention also needs to be paid to where all the stolen goods are going.

Major retailers have said they believe organised gangs are behind a lot of shoplifting, which ought to prompt ministers to boost spending on intelligence-led police operations to catch those responsible.

Unless the government gets tough, and finds the money to enable police to tackle the shoplifting epidemic head-on, it will get even worse.