Retail Environment
The Re-Invention of the Retail Criminal
From “Hashtag Heists” to modern day Robin Hoods—The Cyclical Psychology of Store Thieves
This was the disarming explanation a despairing Nottinghamshire shopkeeper received from a member of a “steaming” gang when leaving her store after wiping her shelves clean locust-style, an all-too-real anecdote she later relayed to a BBC reporter developing a feature about so-called low-level crime—shoplifting and anti-social behaviour—in the sleepy market town of Newark-on-Trent.
Ironically, the picturesque town, a former inland port situated on the River Trent is located in the district of Newark and Sherwood, the historic home of probably the most well-known outlaw of all, Robin Hood, whose “steal from the rich to give to the poor” legacy has also had something of a 21st century makeover when it comes to legitimising store theft.
Pseudo Robin Hood gangs dressed in Lincoln green feathered hats have recently raided major supermarkets in parts of the UK, stealing openly and brazenly before donating their “booty” to various food banks feeding the needy and the just about managing (JAM) families who are working several jobs to make ends meet.
Their direct action is one of a number of protest movements and individual actions during the cost-of-living crisis which followed rapidly on the heels of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global pandemic, factors that put increasing strain on global economies and household budgets as inflation and interest rates reached new heights.
From Victimless Crime to Victim Blaming
These euphemisms for crime are now common in a world of enmity and entitlement where acts of criminality are justified as a form of striking back against big businesses that have been accused of playing the victim while profiteering from global inflationary pressures.
There is nothing new in blaming retailers for crime. In his book Shopping and Crime, Professor Joshua Bamfield from the Centre for Retail Research highlighted the fact that in the 18th century, the vulgar practice of displaying goods in windows and glass cases to encourage customer engagement with the product—a practice that indeed delivered the word shoplifting into the English lexicon—brought with it the reproachment of the genteel society.
This narrative is well described in this extract from a physician, Dr Bucknill in 1862 who argued in a scholarly paper of the challenge of kleptomania: “On the whole we can find more pity for the woman who purloins a piece of lace, without which she thinks she will look absolutely not fit to be seen, than the smirking fellow who has caught her in his haberdashery trap by lying advertisements”.
This emboldened narrative around shoplifting being a victimless crime continues to evolve today even in the face of incontrovertible evidence in the form of the often-wafer-thin profit margins and increased levels of violence and aggression levelled at store colleagues in the grocery sector, in what the Government described as a shoplifting “epidemic”.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 2023 was the worst year on record for shoplifting, with more than 430,000 cases recorded, an increase of more than a third from the year before, but probably just a fraction of the real number.
British Retail Consortium (BRC) figures for last year showed that incidents of customer theft more than doubled from 8 million to 16.7 million in the period between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023, and losses reached £1.8 billion, up from £950 million the year before.
#Borrowing
Dr Craig Donald, a South African organisational psychologist and expert in pre-crime indicators—from the dwell time distract and obstruct behaviours to more intimate anxiety-driven ticks, facial touching and hair stroking displayed by store thieves ahead of their commission of the crime—has monitored the changing landscape of theft behaviour in the digital age.
“Typically, we look at the way people are interacting with the merchandise and their body language, but now people are stealing openly in front of staff because they know there is nothing they can do because there are no sanctions or consequences in the UK where staff are trained to be non-confrontational, something that would not happen in South Africa,” said Craig who has trained CCTV operatives and LP operatives all over the world.
So-called “borrowing”, he said, is an issue that came to the public attention post-pandemic when many young people were shut in their rooms and only interacting with social media and consequently drawn in by online groups offering an alternative and risk-free life of crime where “sticking it to the man” or big businesses is justified because they are portrayed as cashing in on a global crisis.
“Suddenly, they were then set free into society—there was a whole new world out there where they could organise and put this thinking into practice through this social media driven “let’s do it” attitude,” he said.
Loss Prevention Magazine Europe covered this trend in its spring 2023 article From Hashtags to Stash Bags where groups formed on social media were openly encouraged to steal under various euphemistic hashtags such as #borrowingfromprimark, a recruitment call for seemingly disenchanted and disenfranchised followers to shoplift with impunity from the fast fashion giant.
In other social media driven activity, TikTok groups were actively encouraged to mob raid other brands in London’s Oxford Street, London’s largest shopping destination in a co-ordinated day-light robbery of fashion, and all in the name of righting a perceived wrong or injustice. This provocative activity, not surprisingly extensively filmed and shared on social media platforms, brought the Met Police in force to tackle this seeming lawlessness.
“In reality, they are not “sticking it to the man”, but to other consumers who will have to pay more in terms of higher prices,” added Dr Donald.
This is also the view of Farrah McNutt, the founder of Catch a Thief UK who, before launching her online business with second chance support from the Prince’s Trust in 2015, was a reformed shoplifter.
“Despite justification claims that no one is being hurt or that “they can claim it back from their insurance”, store theft means that everyone in the wider community suffers,” said Farrah whose business provides a subscription security service to smaller corner shop and convenience enterprises.
“These stores can’t afford security and have wages to pay and the theft of one item means that they have to sell at least four more to get the profit back—it’s a bigger educational piece,” she said.
“There are also the middle-class kleptomaniacs, those with a real medical condition who care deeply if they are caught. They know it’s a crime and what they are doing is affecting businesses, but they can’t stop until they get help and I know accessing those services is a postcode lottery—it’s possible if you live in Manchester, but there is nothing in Oxford, for example.”
“Meanwhile, in real terms it’s like robbing an old lady who is part of the community that is impacted by the cost of crime,” she continued.
“Bourgeoisification”
These middle-class criminal activities form part of what Matthew Day, a director of Gatekeeper Systems—which provides the Purchek wheel-locking technology to prevent trolley push-out crime—refers to as social engineering and the “bourgeoisifcation” of store theft.
Matt said retailers are now in an AI arms race to machine-learn new “bourgeois behaviours” which will require new levels of collaboration between suppliers to the sector to disrupt and deter this new deviation in that same customer journey.
Referring to Gatekeeper’s own research and that of criminologist Professor Emmeline Taylor, Matt said there was growing evidence of a new breed of store thief who “don’t think of themselves as criminals and believe they’ve cheated the system and the big retailers who they see as the real criminals.”
According to Gatekeeper’s own research conducted by Emeritus Professor Adrian Beck of the ECR, 18 per cent of trolley push-out offenders offered a “reason” for why they had no proof of purchase.
One of the most common excuses was that they had forgotten to pay, or that they were on the way to their vehicle to get their wallet/cash to pay for the goods in the trolley.
This modus operandi is becoming increasingly used by the “bogus bourgeoise” who are socially engineering situations to attempt to defeat the technology.
“One party—usually the wife— approaches the till to pay, while the husband pushes a large trolley of bulky merchandise out of the store to load the car. In the meantime, the wife’s card is declined and after several attempts, she tells the member of staff that she is going to the car to retrieve another means of payment, but then never returns as both have driven off with the goods.”
Greed vs Need
From stealing for need as part of the cost-of-living crisis to stealing for greed and the industrial levels of theft, there is often a fine line.
According to Professor Taylor who hosts the Retail Crime Uncovered podcast, there are three distinct categories of criminal at play, although there is a blurring of the lines in terms of mens rea, motive, and modus operandi.
Firstly, there are the organised travelling gangs of thieves moving across police boundaries to steal from stores throughout the UK, the proceeds of which often fund other organised criminal activity.
Secondly, she points to local prolific criminals who persistently target local stores, sometimes under duress, to steal to order via a middleman or fence to feed an addiction.
Finally, there are the “Swipers” (Seemingly Well-Intentioned Patrons Engaging in Regular Shoplifting), who are often stealing really boring and mundane items.
Swipers, an acronym used by Professor Emmeline Taylor, have also been highlighted by Archie Norman, the M&S chairman who said he believes it’s these people driving the overall spike rather than the gangs or the repeat offenders and that the real culprits are the impatient middle classes, too emboldened and entitled to suffer the ignominy of self-service technology. These are the category who make the justification claim that such technology is making honest shoppers dishonest or that they are doing unpaid work for the supermarket in scanning and bagging their own groceries.
“It’s just too easy to say it’s a cost-of-living problem”, said Norman, the former chairman of the Conservative Party.
“A lot of people go in and think, “well this didn’t scan” or “it’s very difficult to scan these things through”, and “I shop here all the time, it’s not my fault, I’m owed it”, he said.
According to Professor Taylor, an academic specialising in business crime at City, University of London, who began her career working at Professor Martin Gill’s Perpetuity Group “stealing” in order to stress test store security protocols and technologies, these people are often overlooked as they don’t fit a typical shoplifter profile.
“It’s all about performativity. They are well-dressed and well-spoken. When they are challenged with “did you pay for that sir/madam?”, they feign embarrassment, are articulate and apologetic and as a result they are treated differently—you rarely see security staff chasing a middle-class person in a suit because they can laugh it off as a silly mistake,” she added.
This is a nuanced argument and borne out by angst-driven posts on social media sites such as Mumsnet. One recent post read like a cry for help: “I started this two weeks ago at a shop I visit several times per week. The first time I did it, I can’t remember if it was an accident or a conscious choice. I put through most of the items and threw one into my bag unscanned. This shop does not weigh the items on self-scanner and doesn’t have those security bleep things at the exit. Has anyone else done this sort of thing? It’s partly a rush, I think. It sounds cringey to say it—it’s partly to do with a money thing. I’m not in a great place mentally. It’s a big chain, but I’m not excusing it, it’s just that someone will say that I’m stealing from a small independent shop. I’m just trying to understand myself and trying to bloody stop!”
To this point, the psychology of shoplifting is hard to define. Professor Taylor describes how acquisitive crime can be pleasurable. “You can get a physiological response,” she says.
“A feeling of anxiety is suddenly rewarded with a slush of dopamine and pleasure,” she said.
To the issues raised in the Mumsnet post, Professor Taylor also points to the mental health crisis and how engaging in shoplifting can represent a cry for help, especially among women.
Stealing to Order
Professor Taylor said the constant blurring of lines around motive and motivation means these seemingly low-level criminals can cross over into the organised criminal world, as items stolen are re-sold in pubs or other under-the-counter shops and increasingly online through social media marketplaces.
“The items that criminals target no longer fit the shoplifting acronym “CRAVED” —Concealable, Removable, Accessible, Valuable, Enjoyable, and Disposable. A lot of stolen goods are large and not particularly valuable or enjoyable—there is more of a market need and many people simply don’t want to pay for everyday essentials like coffee or washing detergent when they can get it stolen to order and pay less.”
“People go onto a local marketplace and see manuka honey which would be £20 in Holland & Barrett, for £3. They then get a message back asking if there is anything else they need and to “DM” (direct message) them so that that item too can be stolen to order.”
Like our example at the top of the piece around “stock clearance”, this open and brazen criminal behaviour is, according to many experts, fuelled by the current lack of consequences with lack of police response to control the prolific and persistent offenders stealing to order to feed addictions or fund larger criminal enterprises.
Retailers have been dealing with this justification dilemma for many years, not helped by the £200 limit police imposed on the value of goods stolen before the offence is deemed of interest for prosecution. This was enshrined in section 176 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 brought in by the Coalition Government which made theft from a shop of goods worth £200 or less (retail value), a summary-only offence, while preserving the right of defendants to elect to be tried by judge and jury in the Crown Court.
Add to this the no-arrest policies adopted by stores whose understandable duty of care to colleagues in the face of increased violence and aggression means that detention until police arrive is not an option.
History Repeating?
This is all a far cry from the laws on theft in the 17th century. In 1699, the English Parliament passed The Shoplifting Act, part of the so-called Bloody Code which punished petty crimes with death.
People convicted of shoplifting items worth more than five shillings—probably the £200 limit of its day—would be publicly hanged in London’s Tyburn Tree. Alternatively, they would be transported to the North American colonies or Australia’s penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia.
Such was the cruelty of these penalties that some merchants found The Shoplifting Act disproportionately severe often resulting in jurors deliberately under-valuing the cost of items stolen so convicted shoplifters would escape the full force of the law.
Today’s situation very much mirrors that of two-hundred years ago with its swinging pendulum approaches—from almost decriminalisation with the £200 rule and a downplaying of retail crime versus the harsher penalties being sought through Parliament today with the National Police Chiefs’ Council introducing a new retail crime action plan demanding greater response to all crimes including shoplifting.
The plan states that officers are obliged to attend an incident if it involves a prolific and known offender, if there’s violence, and if they have been detained by staff.
New legislation introduced by the last Conservative administration which did not make the statute book before the General Election will make it a standalone offence to assault a retail worker carrying a maximum sentence of six months in prison and repeat shoplifting offenders could be electronically tagged.
Once the definition of what actually constitutes a retail worker is defined—will it be restricted to store colleagues or will delivery drivers also come under the umbrella of the new law, this piece of legislation is likely to progress as it had already garnered cross-party support as a result of the febrile news coverage of increasing retail assaults. How effective it will be however remains to be seen.
According to the Scottish Grocery Federation, convictions made under Scotland’s Protection of Workers Act are “not high enough”, with just 11.6 per cent of reported cases by retailers resulting in conviction since the law’s introduction almost three years ago.
Transform Justice also argued that the new law will potentially contradict another piece of legislation aimed at reducing prison populations.
Anyone convicted of the new offence in England and Wales would not routinely go to prison because, under the Sentencing Bill, jail terms of twelve months or less would be suspended and served in the community, although jail could be imposed in exceptional circumstances.
Tougher sanctions for reported retail crime may not only create headlines and better political optics, but also send a strong message that there are at last consequences to store theft and that shoplifting is far from victimless. Everyone ultimately pays for the steamers, the stock clearers, the swipers, the hashtag heisters, the borrowers and the bogus bourgeoise, all of whom play the blame game when it comes who the real victims are. As Professor Emmeline Taylor eloquently puts it: “When everyday people start to think that it’s OK to steal, there is something very wrong with the society we live in.”
