retail environment
Swedish Retail Crime - A Bridge That's Not Too Far
Europe’s love affair with Scandinavian crime drama has taken a real life twist as the Swedish Retail and Wholesale Council (Handelsrådet) and The British Society of Criminology (BSC) plan to co-sponsor an international seminar on retail crime taking place in Stockholm on 15th September.
Swedish stores are targeted by 2 million shoplifting cases each year, for a value of SEK 4.6 billion, but only 2 percent of these crimes are reported to the police. Food trade has the highest number of thefts, followed by clothing and shoes, electronics and liquor store products. Many of these stores are located within shopping malls. Sweden has approximately 300 shopping centres, double that of ten years ago. For many of us ‘going shopping’ is perceived to be an activity filled with great pleasure (Bamfield, 2012) as shopping centres have evolved from a group of stores to large enclosed malls with an eclectic number of services and functions.
Whilst these shopping centres service a variety of social functions, the majority also share common vulnerabilities – such as parking lots and other design risks. In a parallel development in the last decades, we have witnessed the formation of criminal constellations devoted to retail and cargo crime that involve criminal organisations often beyond national borders and even continents. These activities take a variety of forms including thefts from stores, fraudulent papers, cargo thefts, and corruption – in other words, a gamut of organised criminal activities that may be intertwined with legal ones.
On the 15th September 2016 the Retail Crime: International Evidence and Prevention seminar sponsored by The Swedish Retail and Wholesale Council (Handelsrådet) and The British Society of Criminology (BSC), will take place at Room L1, Drottning Kristinas väg 30, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH). The goal of this international seminar is to characterise the dynamics of crimes typical in retail and shopping centres. The seminar will provide both theoretical and practical perspectives on current crime prevention activities directed to crimes that most affect stores, retailers, shopping malls and commercial conglomerations located both within the inner cities and on the outskirts of towns and cities. As such, this event is aimed at both academics and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.
The seminar offers state-of-the-art research and crime prevention practices on retail from Europe, the UK, the USA, Central America, South America and Australia. For more information, contact Vania A Ceccato, universitetslektor vania.ceccato@abe.kth.se
