Shoplifting surges in U.K., putting workers in scary situations
SOUTHHAMPTON, England — Stashing six bottles of wine into a bag, a man wearing a dark jacket and beanie heads straight to the store exit without paying, barging by a female shop worker who blocks his way and only stopping when her colleague overpowers him just outside the doorway.
For the supermarket’s owner, Richard Inglis, the early morning fracas — captured on CCTV — was the day’s first attempted theft but was unlikely to be the last.
“I’ll probably have another three or four today,” Inglis said, adding that, while trying to stop shoplifters, he and his staff members had been punched, kicked, bitten, spat at, threatened with needles, racially abused and attacked with bottles. “It’s like the Wild West out there at the moment.”
Britain is seeing a surge in theft from its stores at the hands, stores say, of opportunistic shoplifters, marauding teenagers, people stealing to finance drug use and organized gangs intent on looting.
According to official figures, shoplifting incidents recorded by the police rose by 25% in the year ending June 2023, and Co-op, a British supermarket chain with about 2,400 stores, recorded its highest ever levels of theft and aggressive behavior, with almost 1,000 incidents each day in the six months to June 2023, a 35% spike from the previous year. One of its stores was “looted” three times in one day, it said in a news release.
Some statistical comparisons reflect increases after the pandemic, when crime rates fell, but a survey by the British Retail Consortium, a trade body, concluded that incidents including racial and sexual abuse, physical assault and threats with weapons rose from the preCOVID high of more than 450 per day in 2019-20, to more than 850 per day in 2021-22. Theft exceeded preCOVID levels with about 8 million thefts costing retailers almost 1 billion pounds, it added.
With growing evidence of the cost of theft, the government announced a plan last month to tackle shoplifting in partnership with retailers, who have become increasingly vocal.
The chair of the Asda supermarket chain, Stuart Rose, said shoplifting had effectively been “decriminalized” by lack of police enforcement. James Lowman, CEO of the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents smaller retailers, said that “repeat offenders and organized criminals are targeting local shops to steal goods to resell.”
The crime wave has unfolded as Britain’s sluggish economy suffers rampant inflation. Police statistics don’t address shoplifters’ motives, but the increase in theft has incited debate among academics about the root causes: Do they lie in poverty and surging food prices, a failure to tackle drugs, homelessness and other social ills, or a decline in behavior toward store workers dating from the pandemic? Some supermarket bosses believe theft has been legitimized in the minds of some by accusations that supermarkets have profiteered from food price increases. Others think that self-service checkouts offer too much temptation to steal.
“I would say there is a perfect storm of different issues that have now coalesced to a point where the level of shop theft that we are seeing is astronomical,” said Emmeline Taylor, professor of criminology at City, University of London. “It’s an epidemic. We used to think about a theft being a daily occurrence, maybe weekly; this is every minute of every day in city-center stores.”
Taylor said that years of cuts to drug rehabilitation projects, mental health support and other programs had left supermarkets on the front line of a growing social crisis, with inadequate support from law enforcement.
“Overwhelmingly, the police do not respond and have allowed this to escalate to the point where, I would say, theft has been decriminalized,” she said.
In a statement, Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, lead for acquisitive crime for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said that police “take any incident of violence incredibly seriously, and will prioritize our response where there is a risk to individuals.”
Each department, she said, has its own response model that considers the threat, risk and harm of every call.
“In some cases, there may not be enough information for police to act upon or bring about criminal proceedings,” she said, and for these types of offenses, the police focus on “targeting prolific offenders, organized crime networks, and ensuring effective prevention measures are in place.”
That is of limited comfort to Inglis, 44, who says that, on a busy day, he and his 33 workers in three Welcome stores — a franchise of Southern Co-op — face as many as 10 shoplifting incidents. That morning’s theft attempt, which would be logged with police, ended with the culprit walking away, but without the 65 pounds, or roughly $79, of wine he had taken.
Confronting shoplifters has limited losses to around 300 pounds, or roughly $365, a week, Inglis said, though it can backfire. When a group of teenagers who took candy were challenged, one of them kicked down a door, leaving a repair bill much greater than the value of the items.
Groups of youngsters can be unpredictable. “Some will almost fight you to the death over a Mars bar,” Inglis said.
Like other stores, his supermarket, which is close to the Southampton railway station, has invested in security and has 56 CCTV cameras. Alcohol is stocked far from the exit and some other goods often targeted by shoplifters, like washing detergent, are close to areas where staff members are stationed. Just two or three packets of coffee are stocked on shelves at a time to limit what can be stolen in one attempt.
Like many retailers, Inglis does not think most shoplifters are reacting to inflation or stealing out of a need to feed themselves, and sees drug-related crime as a much bigger factor.