Why shoplifting is out of hand with brazen criminals are playing Supermarket Sweep - David Behrens
There are too many shoplifters – on that we can agree. What to do about them is altogether more divisive. Within the retail industry and the government right now, a disorganised tug of war is going on and everyone is pulling in different directions.
The big shopkeepers seem unable to decide even among themselves how to react. M&S wants more action to protect staff while Waitrose seems content to throw its workers to the wolves. And ministers have promised tougher penalties for offenders while at the same time preventing them from being locked up because the prisons are full.
While this is going on, brazen criminals are playing Supermarket Sweep, shovelling goods wholesale into their anorak pockets knowing they probably won’t be caught and certainly not punished. The stasis is literally a free meal ticket for them.
The numbers are bad enough but they tell only half the story. In the last year, 530,000 incidents of shoplifting were recorded and perhaps three times as many went uncounted because police are perceived to be as thin on the ground as binmen in Birmingham and it wasn’t worth anyone’s time trying to call 999.
And don’t make the mistake of presuming these were thefts perpetrated by destitute people too poor to feed their families: we’re dealing here with gangs who recruit stooges to ‘steal to order’ electronics, cosmetics and other luxury items they can sell. The few that are apprehended are the flotsam and jetsam that wash up in court and wash out on a tide of ‘community sentences’ they will never complete. They are motivated by habit and the knowledge that there is no real deterrent.
The government knows this very well, which is why it’s doing away with the ‘low level’ threshold which since 2014 has reduced the maximum sentence for stealing items worth less than £200 from seven years to six months.
But that is negated by powers introduced three weeks ago which stop courts imposing immediate short prison sentences on anyone at all, except in extreme circumstances, because there is nowhere to put them. Jail terms must now be suspended; in other words, not served.
The net result, if you are a habitual shoplifter, is that you can go about your criminal business secure in the knowledge that you’re not going to be banged up unless you seriously injure someone in the course of stuffing a leg of lamb into your trousers. And the likelihood of that happening is what is making the shopkeepers break ranks.
Last week the chief executive and retail director of M&S demanded police be given greater resources to target repeat offenders and crime hotspots. They spoke of gangs forcing open locked cabinets; of two men emptying the shelves of steak and walking out as if they were entitled to it; and of a group of young people ransacking a store and then head-butting an employee.
So this is not a victimless crime against faceless corporations: shop staff are in the front line. And for every store worker butted in the head, a dozen more are living in fear of being next. That’s why the decision by Waitrose to punish a worker in that situation rather than protect him struck such a wrong note.
You will have read, of course, about Walker Smith, the 54 year-old employee of 17 years’ standing who was sacked for stopping a shoplifter stashing Easter eggs at a Waitrose branch in London. The company responded with the usual bull about health and safety being its top priority, because that’s what public relations people always spout when they want to deflect the real issue.
But Waitrose also said that “we never want to be in a position where we are notifying families of a tragedy because someone tried to stop a theft”. Yet they were happy enough to tell someone’s family they could no longer afford their mortgage because Dad tried to do the right thing. It smacks of scapegoating the most at-risk staff for the convenience of the HR department.
Mr Smith was not the only person to have discovered you can’t do right for doing wrong. In London, the owner of a small store was among many to find that prosecuting victims of crime is less trouble than pursuing the perpetrators. “We don’t call the police any more – they don’t come so why bother?” he told the BBC. “And if you try to hold the person here, you’re in the wrong.”
It seems like a vicious circle but it really isn’t. There is an obvious way through the maze of contradictions and that is to remove the incentive to shoplift by devising a punishment that is unpleasant and inevitable.
Make them empty the bins in Birmingham – that would be a start. And, by the way, Waitrose, if I were running the shop that’s what I’d have your HR department doing.