And ‘These People’ Isn’t Who You Might Think…

Who does she mean, Reader?

Things have changed in my local sandwich shop. Every so often, in the middle of ringing through my americano, the server will go stock still, like a savannah predator who has spotted a tiny rustling movement in the grass. Then, whiskers twitching, he will suddenly dart out from behind the counter and rush after some youth who has just made it out of the door, swipe their pilfered lunch from their hands in one practised movement, and then return with the spoils: a Coke, say, or a chicken wrap, to general applause. He doesn’t appear to have been harmed, yet, by his light-fingered customers — but I do worry about him. It seems to be getting worse.

Is it, perhaps, 'shoplifters'?

Labour has fingered a culprit: this week Yvette Cooper put the blame on what she called a “shoplifters’ charter” — a change brought in under Theresa May which made lifting an item under £200 a mere “summary offence”, intended to speed things up and take the burden off the courts: police can deal with it themselves. Cooper has argued that this cut deterrents and has therefore encouraged more crime.

Oh, so it's one of Britain's worst PMs in living memory, then? But she's only one person (thank heavens!). 

Removing the lesser “summary offence” will mean shoplifters will have to be sent through the court system, putting more strain on a service which already has a vast backlog. Ramping up deterrents for this relatively low-level crime will also send vulnerable people to jail.

Oh oh! When the new meaning of 'vulnerable' comes in, you can tell where this is heading... 

But stricter rules mean little if you can’t catch offenders in the first place. And this is hard to do, even with far more police on the case.

Your sandwich shop man managed it.  

First, shoplifting is generally done surreptitiously within the store — the steak in the coat pocket, the baby formula in the nappy bag — but shops are not public spaces, so police can’t follow suspicious people down the aisles.

That's what security guards are for!  

All they can do is patrol past the door — an obstacle the practiced shoplifter can overcome by waiting until they pass. Police can’t frisk everyone on the way out.

Here’s the problem that neither party can face up to. The real culprits behind the rise in shoplifting may also be among its victims: large chain stores. And the real solution may not in fact lie with the justice system. Let me explain.

Well, who had supermarkets on their bingo card? Certainly not me!  

While automation has generally reduced crime — new locking systems have virtually eliminated car theft — in large chain stores it has done the opposite.

Car theft is up not down! 

A rise in sensors and self-checkout, particularly during the pandemic, has saved these shops money on staff but has created losses elsewhere: it has made it much easier to steal things. Why didn’t these shops put people straight back behind the tills once they realised what was going on? Well, perhaps they were making a cost-benefit calculation — writing off stock shrinkage against savings in salaries. Fair enough, but what if it is the lawlessness generated by these policies that has now resulted in thefts in my local sandwich shop? Once theft becomes normalised, it can spread. It is unfair for large retailers to strip their shops of staff and then place the burden of resulting crimes on the state.

That's not convincing, frankly. I use these self-service tills when I have to, yet I've never waltzed into Greggs and swiped a sandwich then walked out without paying. Why do some people do it?