Retail Environment
Morality, Myths, Meth, and Maths
The Commercial Reality of Drug Addiction on the UK High Street
Even the most hard-nosed and hard-line advocates of “zero tolerance” law and order—the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” brigade—cannot fail to be moved by the commercial reality of the UK’s drug problem that is fuelling industrial levels of daily store theft to feed the rapacious habits of addicts.
The common mythology is the too-often lazy demonisation of the local and known persistent and prolific “characters”—an image that creates a false narrative around manageable and collateral loss. But the reality of revolving door justice for desperate addicts—the arrest, arraignment, and ejection back onto the same high streets only to offend again just hours later—paints a completely different landscape.
The mathematics of drug addiction tell their own story. According to a report from the Centre for Social Justice, heroin and crack cocaine, along with the recent explosion in new psychoactive substances, are not only blighting communities, but drive as much as 50 per cent of all acquisitive crime, and 70 per cent of shop thefts.
The report conservatively estimated that shop theft cost £6.3 billion, the equivalent to £270 for every household in the country—and more than the average household’s monthly grocery shop.
The Crime Survey for England & Wales estimated that 8.8 per cent of people aged sixteen to fifty-nine years—around 2.9 million people—reported using any drug in the last twelve months for the year ending in March 2024, while around 3 per cent (approximately 1 million people) reported using a Class A drug in the last twelve months.
Drug use was higher among people aged sixteen to twenty-four years, with 16.5 per cent admitting to taking illegal substances.
The sale and use of illegal drugs costs UK society some £20 billion a year and inflicts significant harm on individuals, their families and wider communities.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) there were 5,448 deaths related to the use of drugs in England and Wales last year—the highest level of drug-related deaths on record—and an 11 per cent increase in drug-related deaths compared to the previous year. Thousands of other drug users go under the radar yet suffer from complex health problems.
The distribution of drugs also generates significant levels of violence, with around half of homicides linked to gangs involved in the distribution and sale of drugs. In addition, “county lines” has seen increasing violence as gangs compete for market share, and the exploitation of vulnerable people by these gangs.
Retailer’s Realisation
Retailers are at the sharp end of the needle of addiction as millions of stolen items from their stores are the only means by which addicts can feed their habit. But that drug-fuelled theft quickly mainlines into the bloodstream of the body corporate in the form of billions of pounds worth of losses for high street businesses.
Now many businesses have done their sums and are changing the narrative. Instead of “we can’t afford to help drug users turn their lives around through funding offender to rehabilitation schemes”, they are now recognising they can no longer afford not to—it is simply a case of maths over myths.
It is often the kindness of strangers, the shopworkers or the beat officers who see drug addicts day in, day out, that have made the difference rather than any punitive sanction from the criminal justice system.
PC Stuart Toogood, a West Midlands beat officer whose patrols around Birmingham brought him into daily contact with shoplifting addicts, started a crusading campaign that went beyond his day job or pay grade. He recognised that for many there was a desire to break the cycle of addiction, but they needed help beyond the cycle of prison and pariah status. This was an epiphany that drove him to work with community groups, often in his own time, to help develop the Offender to Rehab (O2R) programme that has gained both traction and trust across the West Midlands.
Keeley Knowles
One beneficiary of the programme—now rebranded to “Offending to Recovery”—is Keeley Knowles who was, according to PC Toogood, “the most prolific offender I had ever seen”.
Written off by society and her own family, Keeley from Birmingham, now 42, had spent almost thirty of those years addicted to drugs and stealing from shops in and around Birmingham to feed her £300-per-day heroin habit.
Stuart said, “Keeley has spent the last 29 years as a career shoplifter in order to score drugs, a habit that has seen her go to prison twenty-eight times in the UK and three times in Amsterdam.”
Starting small with local convenience stores, Keeley graduated to high-end fashion stores to steal designer clothes and high-end brand accessories, items that commanded a greater payback. While averaging around £3,000 per day, her audacity sometimes reached the £7,000 per day level as part of her increasingly chaotic and out-of-control life where she was also funding her partner’s habit.
Over twenty-nine years of theft from local stores in and around Birmingham, Keeley is estimated to have bankrolled more than £30 million in stolen items, all of which was consumed by her habit.
“She would go into designer outlets and fill the pockets of her big coat, come back home and sell the items either directly or through an established WhatsApp group,” said Stuart.
In her own words, Keeley said: “Around 90 per cent of what I took was high-end designer goods, but obviously when COVID hit, supermarkets were the only option so I was filling trolleys and walking out with them, and on hard days when things didn’t go to plan it was anything I could get my hands on.”
“There isn’t really a high street store I never targeted at some point.”
“I had a massive WhatsApp group I’d sell my stuff on. I’d post the pictures in there on the train or bus, and most of it would sell before I got home, and I’d then just meet the buyers with their chosen items.”
“Anything else went to be sold at local pubs and people on my estate.”
“I preferred stealing to order, but if I had no orders, I’d just get what I knew was popular, such as Ray-Ban and Gucci sunglasses in summer and Michael Kors and North Face jackets in winter. I just got to know what people liked.”
Keeley had resigned herself to a life of crime and doing time—she had written herself off, as previous attempts to wean her away from drugs had failed.
“I thought I was going to die a junkie,” Keeley told Loss Prevention Magazine Europe.
But, as mentioned earlier, the kindness of strangers—in fact, one of her “victims”—helped her mend her ways.
“I had been hitting TK Maxx stores in the Birmingham area really hard to the point where I had stolen £3.5 million over a two-and a half year period—they did not like me one bit.”
“But the head of security in their Selly Oak store went above and beyond to help me—he did not want to keep arresting me. So, he approached Stuart and said, “she needs help”—something I am so grateful for.”
“Stuart came to see me and at first, I simply was not interested as I had heard it all before—I even gave him a fake address to begin with—but I’m so glad he persisted.”
She was initially given an Espranor tablet which was the first part of the programme to block her cravings for addictive substances such as heroin, which was Keeley’s drug of choice.
“I found making the transition from methadone to Espranor really hard as I have always suffered badly with the withdraw, but most people who do the transition have an easier time.”
“I suffered ten days of horrific hallucinations—it was terrible both mentally and physically—I thought I was going to die.”
“But after a couple of months of waiting, I was given my first Buvidal injection. It is a monthly opiate blocker which has been like a miracle cure. Whereas I had previously been tired all of the time, I enjoyed my first good night’s sleep since I was thirteen, the age I was when I was first groomed into taking drugs.”
“It’s not available to everybody as it is expensive. It also only works well with heroin, and you have to take it in a supervised environment. But whereas we were previously offered methadone which was enough to ease the craving before you went out shoplifting again, this new treatment completely cancels the yearning for heroin—it is a game changer.”
Keeley is now one year drug-free, and she has put her life back in order rebuilding her relationships with her family, her mother, and her nieces and nephews who she had lost touch with.
She has provided loss prevention insights for stores on security issues and is now looking to work with the police and the Offender to Rehab programme (O2R) to provide drug advice to teenagers before they make life-changing and damaging life decisions.
“What I say to them is “don’t write yourselves off”—I thought I would die a junkie but look what has happened to me in the last twelve months.”
But she is far from complacent and is well aware of the risks of going backwards. She still lives in her old haunting ground which can and has presented triggering moments and flashbacks.
“When I used to see a high vis jacket or a police officer, I would feel physically sick which would almost trigger my withdrawal symptoms,” said Keeley.
“Stuart said: “During the year, Keeley did offend once in this period, but we put that down to a blip as there was another issue that had not been fully addressed at this time.”
“Keeley has now excelled and is in a position where she has presented to lots of police teams in Birmingham around the subject of addiction in order to educate and inform them.”
“She has also spoken at crime prevention and business conferences about her story, as well as making television appearances on the BBC, Sky and Channel 5 News to promote the benefits of Buvidal.”
Daniel Doherty
Another Midlands success story is that of Daniel Doherty who had spent his adult life stealing to score drugs, from crack cocaine to heroin, as well as prescription drugs and alcohol. Unlike Keeley, Dan has now moved away from Birmingham through the help of the “A Better Tomorrow” programme in Telford, Shropshire where he has now built a new life with his girlfriend.
“Drugs took over my life from the age of fifteen. I went from weed to harder drugs when I lived in a house share in Birmingham, and went out every day to shoplift—I was stealing at least £100 per day and manipulating and stealing from friends and family to get money.”
His habit became so bad he could no longer hold down a job or relationships and his life spiralled out of control.
“All my dole money would go in a single day,” he said.
Linked to the O2R programme, A Better Tomorrow has provided Dan with a clean break from his past life, and he now goes into shops not to steal but to provide security advice to teams of store detectives.
“I tell them that security teams would possibly deter me when they were on duty, but I was never bothered about CCTV or warning signs—they would never stop me from what I was determined to do,” said Dan who has recently passed his driving test.
The father-of-two now sees his eleven-year-old daughter and six-year-old son at weekends when he comes back to visit the city, but he knows a full-time return could knock his hard-earned progress off track.
“It is so hard on them and me—I love them to bits, but moving back is not an option as it could draw me back into the old ways and I would be no use to anyone, especially myself. I’m doing the best I can, but I have to be strong on this,” he said.
Both Dan and Keeley are great advocates of the award-winning O2R programme that has transformed lives and saved retailers in Birmingham hundreds of thousands of pounds so far.
Prevention is Better Than Cure
It is funded by the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Simon Foster who backs the Howard League programme because it focuses on the underlying causes of crime with a view to preventing it happening in the first place.
O2R started in 2023 when twenty-seven prolific shoplifters were admitted into residential rehab and stopped stealing to feed their habit thanks to the scheme.
On receiving an achievement award from the West Midlands, PC Stuart Toogood, added: “We wanted to recognise all of our clients’ achievements and also thank all of our partner agencies who make our programme what it is.”
“It was incredibly moving to listen to our clients’ stories and a chance for us to really celebrate their achievements. Many were several years into recovery, whilst other were several months—all have done really well, and act as an inspiration to others struggling with their addiction.”
“Our programme is there to help those individuals, but we are also very mindful that our aim is also to prevent crime, reduce risk to shopworkers, and stop money going into the illegal drugs market that is linked to organised crime and violence—our programme does this. I know that all of us in the team are incredibly proud of all our clients.”
According to Stuart Toogood, the principle is simple: chasing, arresting, and imprisoning shoplifters who are stealing to feed an addiction is time-consuming for the police, expensive for the taxpayer, and rarely solves the underlying causes of the crime, with the inevitable outcome that when people are released from prison, the whole process just ends up happening all over again.
Instead, under its new title of the Offending to Recovery Programme, people with substance misuse issues are identified and supported to access either new treatments such as Buvidal, placed into specialist recovery communities with meaningful daily support, or placed into residential rehab facilities. Once their addiction is treated, they are highly likely to stop stealing.
Central Co-op
Central Co-op, which has convenience stores across Birmingham and the wider Midlands, is an early adopter of the programme.
Nicola Walton, a loss prevention advisor for the last fourteen years has worked closely with Stuart and the team for the last few years since a relationship was forged with the O2R programme. Starting under the stewardship of former head of loss prevention Craig Goldie in 2018, Nicola now supports the progress of those going through the programme in recent years, but her relationship with Keeley goes back even further.
“I used to be a store detective in GAP in Birmingham’s Bull Ring around twenty years ago which is where I first came into contact with Keeley.”
“Back then I did not have much to do with her other than I knew that she was a prolific shoplifter. When we met again as part of the programme, we both recognised each other.”
“And, what a difference I see in her now! She has thrived with the programme that she is on and the support she has received.”
Central Co-op—which covers a wide Midlands region from South Yorkshire and Staffordshire, and Derbyshire in the north, and Leicestershire, Peterborough and Suffolk in the east—recognised an opportunity with Stuart Toogood to help break the cycle of prolific offending and prison for some addicts by providing them support as opposed to sanction.
“The O2R programme helps those people turn their lives around, but it has a benefit to our business in that they are no longer stealing from us,” said Nicola.
“I went out with Stuart for the day to see the work that he does, which was really eye-opening. He has provided us with the names of the people who would genuinely benefit from our help like Keeley who we provided a laptop to in order for her to progress her education.”
“And as part of a quid-pro-quo, she has visited their stores to provide the benefit of her experiences as a shoplifter.”
“She’s told us what would have attracted her to our stores and what would have put her off.”
Jiten Lad, Central Co-op’s, senior people and profit protection manager who has been with the business for the last twelve months, said: “I have come in on the back of all of the hard work that has gone before me. I had never come across the O2R programme before and I’m simply amazed by the results—people like Keeley and Dan really inspire me in the way they have been determined to get their lives back.”
“I’ve also been so impressed with Stuart—he’s a humble guy who wants to do the right thing by people and he has come at this issue from a completely different angle and one that has made a real difference. It is not just supporting a programme but being prepared to stand by people and not give up on them.”
“That might mean giving them a second or even third chance—it completely changes your mindset.”
The support from Central Co-op is key to the success of the programme. With two hundred and forty-five stores—with another fifteen opening in 2025, as well as one hundred and seventy funeral homes—the O2R programme will continue to grow, according to Jiten.
“The power of people and kindness is massive in this respect and we as a business want to and will do more going forward and not just in the Midlands,” he added.
With Britain’s over-crowded prisons, there is a wider role for business to play in helping people to change their addictive habits and their lives. Even if they do not recognise that responsibility from a moral perspective, the commercial reality—the math versus the meth—means that they are helping to and directly benefitting from breaking the vicious cycle of criminality. Prevention, as they say, is always better than cure, but the O2R programme is providing both.
