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High streets across the UK are struggling with an epidemic of stealing. What’s behind this sudden crime wave and can anything be done to stop it?
Charlie TeasdaleSun 2 Jun 2024 00.05 BSTShare
Aman leaves a north London branch of Aldi carrying two bags of groceries that he did not pay for. He hadn’t planned to steal, but after becoming exasperated with the slowness of staff attending to the various glitches and alarms of the self-checkout system, and assuming it would go unnoticed, decides to just walk out the door.
He crosses the road and heads towards home. It’s a busy part of town and this kind of thing happens all the time. He doubts anyone in the store even noticed. But a voice calls after him, a security guard has given chase. The man, slightly panicked, doubles down and quickens his pace, pretending not to hear, but the guard keeps shouting, pleading for him to stop. In an attempt to lose his pursuer, the man ducks into a newsagent. The security guard enters, finds the man pretending to browse the fountain pens, and challenges him. “Sir, you didn’t pay for that shopping.”
The man is what criminologist Professor Emmeline Taylor calls a “Swiper”, a Seemingly Well-Intentioned Patron Engaging in Regular shoplifting. But he’s probably more of an opportunist than a regular offender. I know because he’s a friend of mine. Someone I consider to be kind, thoughtful and, for the most part, law-abiding. But the same can be said for people across the country and that hasn’t stopped national shoplifting stats soaring.
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 that is probably just a fraction of the real number. The British Retail Consortium – the body representing almost all of the major retail chains, incorporating food and drink, fashion, DIY, health and beauty and more – recently reported that incidents of customer theft more than doubled from 8m to 16.7m in the period between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023. Losses reached £1.8bn, up from £950m the year before.
The Office for National Statistics says 2023 was the worst year on record for shoplifting, with more than 430,000 cases
The Co-op alone recorded 330,000 incidents of shoplifting, abuse, violence and antisocial behaviour in its 2,500+ stores across the UK in 2023, a 44% increase on the year before. The company, one of the most vocal on the subject (which it can be as a co-operative, knowing there are no share prices at risk), recently published a report titled Stealing with Impunity, which attempted to encapsulate the impact the rise in shoplifting is having on the business. In the introduction, Paul Gerrard, the Co-op’s director of public affairs, described a state of “lawlessness on the UK high street that has never been seen before”
Over the phone, Gerrard paints a broader, more compassionate picture. Stealing to provide for oneself has always happened, he says, remarkably so “for a country as rich as ours. But what’s behind the 44% rise is not people stealing for themselves, but people stealing on a large scale to resell to people struggling to make ends meet.”
The cost of living crisis, directly or indirectly, is the driving force of the UK’s shoplifting epidemic. Taylor, who hosts the Retail Crime Uncovered podcast and wrote the report for the Co-op, divides culprits into three categories.
First, there are organised criminals moving from county to county picking targets and stealing in bulk to sell at a reduced price. Easy pickings, says Taylor: “Why risk the penalties of drug trafficking when you can just go and target companies up and down the country?” Second are the “local prolifics”, repeat offenders who target the same stores over and over again. Often, either under duress or on commission, thieves work for a middle-man – a fence – who acts as a kind of discount boutique for the community. “We’re seeing markets for really boring, mundane products,” says Taylor. “People don’t want to waste hard-earned cash buying things like laundry detergent or coffee.”
A 2018 report by the Centre for Social Justice stated that dependencies on heroin, crack cocaine and psychoactive substances drive 70% of all retail theft in the UK, and Taylor says the bulk of these prolific offenders are vulnerable, be it through substance abuse, extreme poverty or poor mental health.
‘The response from offenders is often, “Ring the police, they’re not going to come,”’ says one security guard
Finally, there are the opportunists, the Swipers. M&S chairman and former Conservative shadow minister Archie Norman recently said he believes it’s these people driving the overall spike, not necessarily the gangs or the repeat offenders. In November, he told the LBC podcast, Money with David Buik and Michael Wilson, that “it’s just too easy to say it’s a cost of living problem”, and that the real culprits are the impatient middle classes, too entitled to suffer self-service technology. “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.
A few weeks ago, I started asking people, in confidence, what they thought about shoplifting, why they think there’s more of it and whether they do it themselves. I wanted to get a sense of where it sits on the spectrum of transgression. Is it, for example, worse than jumping a red light on a bicycle, but more palatable than graffiti? Do people think it’s victimless and how have those that work on retail’s frontline had to adjust? And is it all about getting more for less, or has a new sense of apathetic abandon drifted into the national psyche?
Some people, I learned, shoplift to put food on the table and some do it out of a sense of duty to stick it to the man. Some do it out of principle, balking at the prices. And some do it because the world feels too big and out of control, because they can’t buy a house or start a pension and leaving Waitrose with the weekend paper under their arm gives them a sense of agency, misguided as it may be. Many, I’m happy to report, don’t do it at all.
“I used to do it more for a thrill, now I’m doing it for a practical purpose,” says a man I speak to in Cornwall, who tells me his mortgage repayments are about to double. He doesn’t consider himself a prolific offender nor does he steal in bulk, but in order to feed himself and his two children, he supplements the weekly shop with things he doesn’t pay for. Cheese, for example, or meat. “All the sugary products are super-cheap,” he says, “and anything with fewer ingredients is more expensive, which is nonsense.”
The man doesn’t steal via the self-checkouts. “There’s more of a risk there,” he says. He fills a bag as he shops and, when he gets to the cashier, he simply leaves a few pieces inside. “I don’t walk out and feel guilty about it,” he says. “For me, the people working there aren’t affected. I’m just eating into the massive profits they’re making.”
‘Shops don’t care about us. And this is a very, very minor way, probably not even noticeable, to get back at them’
That sense of rebellion is echoed by almost every person I speak to. A tech-industry manager tells me that the “corporate mentality” for increasing profits, raising prices well above inflation and not caring how it affects people, “has never seemed more prevalent than it is now. I see the supermarkets as victims, but I don’t give a shit,” he continues, saying that he doesn’t always scan everything at the self-checkout, but only ever at M&S, where he believes the scales are less sensitive. “They don’t care about us. And this is a very, very minor way, probably not even noticeable, to get back at them.”
“It’s all part of a mentality of feeling like you’re being screwed and that you’re a commodity,” a Gen Z arts industry man tells me. He says he often pilfers from supermarkets and even airport duty-free lounges, which are especially good for cosmetics.
I meet three students smoking a joint in London’s Hyde Park and ask them about their criminal activity, assuming, given the context, that they’re all up for a little light shoplifting. They’re not, it seems, until one eventually admits that he didn’t pay for the jacket he’s wearing. “I went to buy my mum a birthday present,” he remembers, “and it was quite expensive, so I took this to make up for it.”
The psychology of shoplifting is hard to pin down. Emmeline Taylor describes how acquisitive crime can be pleasurable. “You get a physiological response,” she says. “A feeling of anxiety is suddenly rewarded with a slush of dopamine and pleasure.”
Taylor also points to the mental health crisis and how engaging in shoplifting can represent a cry for help, especially among women. Around 85% of people arrested are men and only 4% of the prison population is made up of women, but of the 19,900 defendants prosecuted for shop theft in 2021, 28% were women.
What about the role of politics, climate change, Brexit, global conflict and a dodgy economy? Might they somehow correlate with the rise in shop theft? Taylor says there could be a link, but it’s unquantifiable. “It’s really hard to articulate, but there’s almost been a loss of trust in the structures and institutions of society.” She points to the government’s lockdown rule-breaking as an example. “I think that trickles down,” she says. “People ask: ‘Why should we be bound by social convention if our government is not?’”
Professor Jason Roach, a criminologist at Huddersfield University, isn’t so sure. “Do people going in to nick a jar of coffee really think about the state of the world?” he asks. “No.” He argues that the young man’s theft of the jacket was not necessarily down to the many ills of society, perhaps the young man wanted the jacket and rationalised the theft by buying a present for his mum at the same time.
Roach and Taylor both highlight the role of social media, especially on young people, on whom, says Roach, the “pressure to conform and have the latest stuff is even greater than before”. Last year, several hundred young people stormed London’s Oxford Street to carry out daylight smash-and-grab raids on stores after allegedly organising them on TikTok. “These are people who don’t know each other,” says Taylor, “coming together on a shared platform and thinking, ‘Yeah, I want to be part of that.’”
On Oxford Street, Europe’s busiest shopping destination, the security guard of a global high-street fashion store tells me that in his four years on the job, shoplifting frequency has only increased. Last week, he says, he caught a guy trying to steal £700-worth of clothing, using a special pin to remove the electronic tags.
A guard from another store nearby tells me that his team catches three or four shoplifters a day, but find scores of discarded tags around the store and by then it’s too late. Even if they see someone stealing, they might not get involved.
“Every retailer in the country that I know has a policy for staff that says, ‘Don’t intervene,’” says the Co-op’s Paul Gerrard. “When colleagues try to intervene, that’s when they get hurt.”
I ask the guard if he feels safe and he says no – he has to wear a stab vest, of course he isn’t safe. He tells me that in his first few weeks as a guard, when he was working at a different branch, a group of 10 to 15 teenagers stormed the store twice in the same week in two 15-second smash-and-grab raids. “The second time, I had another security guard with me who tried to close the door,” he says, “but he couldn’t and one jumped in. He took 11 or 12 jackets, I grabbed him and put him on the floor and we started fighting. An actual fight.”
I ask both security guards when and how the police get involved and they both laugh. The first guard told me that he called the police just before 6pm the other day and they called him back five hours later, when he was home in bed. The other said it’s just a faster process if they don’t get the police involved at all.
If you’re caught shoplifting on Oxford Street, or at any big store, you are likely to be taken by security to a detention room and searched. You’ll have your picture taken, be banned from the store, maybe even the whole street and then the police (or your parents, if you’re under 18) will be called to intervene. Failing that, you’ll be escorted to the nearest train station. But there’s nothing stopping you coming back the next day.
Gerrard notes that in the first quarter of 2023, police didn’t turn up to seven out of 10 incidents at the Co-op and, bafflingly, says that even when staff had managed to detain an offender, the police attended even less. “The response from offenders is often, ‘Ring the police, they’re not going to come,’” he says.
Speaking last month, in a different interview with LBC, Archie Norman concurred. “We get very little help from the police,” he said. “I think we have to accept that police are not interested in this sort of crime any more, whether we like it or not.”
I think we have to accept that police are not interested in this sort of crime any more, whether we like it or not
Archie Norman
Since last October, when the National Police Chiefs’ Council introduced a new retail crime action plan, there has been a shift. Gerrard says that police are now attending six out of every 10 incidents at the Co-op. 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. “But it’s still very much caveated by, if something of higher priority comes in, then you’re going to have to wait,” says Taylor.
New legislation 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. However, since the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, so-called “low value” shoplifting – anything under a value of £200 – is punished as a Summary Offence, which will usually only result in a postal fine. Just like a speeding ticket.
Last month, Chris Philp, minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, said: “To the shoplifters and those abusing shopworkers, enough is enough.” However, statistically, shoplifting is all but decriminalised in the UK: 70% of investigations into the 430,000+ reported incidents in 2023 were closed with no person identified. That means only around 129,000 of the estimated 16.7m incidents were brought to justice – less than 1%.
In the end, my friend, the one with the two bags of shopping from Aldi, saw sense. He snapped out of whatever urge sent him into a life of crime, followed the guard back to the store and paid in full. Perhaps there is hope for us. Perhaps it’s a sign that the fever is breaking. Or perhaps it was just his bad luck to get caught.
- This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025. The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media.
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Reasonable Suspicion
In subject area: Computer Science
‘Reasonable suspicion’ is a belief based on specific facts that a person may be involved in a particular offense, supported by witness testimony or evidence.
AI generated definition based on: Contemporary Security Management (Fourth Edition), 2018
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Chapters and Articles
You might find these chapters and articles relevant to this topic.
Chapter
Managing Investigations
2018, Contemporary Security Management (Fourth Edition)John J. Fay, David Patterson
Written Consent Required
Testing can be done only with the written consent of the suspect. Prior to obtaining the consent, the employer and/or the polygraph examiner must disclose to the suspect the specific offense under investigation, time and place of the offense, and why the employee is a suspect. If reasonable suspicion is supported by a witness, the name of the witness can be withheld from the suspect.
Chapter
Managing Investigations
2011, Contemporary Security Management (Third Edition)John J. Fay
Polygraph Testing
The Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) of 1988 permits the testing of employees only for the investigation of crimes in which the employer has an interest. An employer may test an employee who falls under a cloud of reasonable suspicion. Reasonable suspicion can be shown when the employee was at the place of the crime at or near the time of the crime, had opportunity (such as access to property that was stolen), and is implicated by a credible witness. A showing of reasonable suspicion is also present if an employee lied when questioned about the crime. Figure 13–6 depicts finger attachments used to measure galvanic skin resistance.
Written Consent Required
Testing can be done only with the written consent of the suspect. Prior to obtaining the consent, the employer and/or the polygraph examiner must disclose to the suspect the specific offense under investigation, time and place of the offense, and why the employee is a suspect. If reasonable suspicion is supported by a witness, the name of the witness can be withheld from the suspect.
Polygraph Theory
Lie detection is based on the assumption that when an individual experiences apprehension, fear, or emotional excitement, his or her respiration rate, blood pressure, and galvanic skin resistance sharply increase. A polygraph instrument records the changes as the individual is questioned by a trained examiner. The examiner interprets the recordings and renders an opinion as to the truthfulness of the person examined.
The theory behind the polygraph technique holds that a conscious mental effort to deceive made by a normal, healthy person will cause certain physiological changes detectable by the polygraph instrument. These changes are driven by the autonomic nervous system, which regulates the body’s internal environment and is generally involuntary. The parasympathetic nervous system, a division of the autonomic nervous system, dominates in relaxed situations. It performs routine “housekeeping” functions such as digestion and maintenance of body temperature. No matter how hard an examinee might try, he or she will not be able to prevent physiological changes in respiration rate, blood pressure, and galvanic skin resistance.
Polygraph Accuracy
Hundreds of studies conducted over the years to determine the accuracy of the polygraph technique have produced less than conclusive judgments. Still, a preponderance of the data indicates that when properly trained examiners utilize an established testing procedure, the accuracy of their decisions is generally in the range of 85–95% for specific-issue investigations. Few studies have been made to determine the range of accuracy for pre-employment testing.
One of the problems in judging overall accuracy is a misunderstanding of the term inconclusive as it used in the reporting of test results. An inconclusive result simply means that the examiner was unable to render a definite conclusion. By way of illustration, if 10 polygraph examinations were administered and the examiner was correct in 7 decisions, wrong in 1, and had 2 inconclusive test results, the percentage of accuracy is 87.5% (7 out of 8). Others would say the percentage is 70% (7 out of 10).
Polygraph Errors
Polygraph errors are nearly always human errors. They tend to center on the examiner’s failure to prepare the examinee for the test and correctly read the data on the polygraph charts.
A false positive test report occurs when a truthful examinee is reported as being deceptive. A false negative report occurs when a deceptive examinee is reported as truthful. It is widely believed that negatives occur more frequently than positives, perhaps because examiners would rather let a deceptive individual get by than to declare an innocent individual deceptive.Show more
Chapter
X-Ways Forensics and Criminal Investigations
2014, X-Ways Forensics Practitioner’s GuideBrett Shavers, Eric Zimmerman
Introduction
This chapter aims to cover the use of X-Ways Forensics (XWF) as it relates to criminal investigations: specifically knock and talks, search warrants, and probationary-type reviews of computers.
This chapter assumes that, prior to any activity, valid legal authority or consent has been given to officers who will examine any device. In most places, “valid legal authority” equates to either a search warrant or some kind of parole or supervised release status. A search warrant is typically authorized by a judge after probable cause has been adequately demonstrated by some law enforcement entity. Once signed, the search warrant gives law enforcement the right to search and seize relevant items as specified in the warrant. While there are exceptions to the search warrant requirement, this chapter will not address those areas of search and seizure law.
A knock and talk involves the owner of a computer consenting to the search by voluntarily waiving his or her rights. Knock and talks are usually undertaken when there is not enough probable cause to justify a search warrant. This waiver gives a government agency the authority to search property. Each jurisdiction has its own policies, procedures, and laws pertaining to consent searches, but generally the citizen must voluntarily give up his or her rights of search protections in order for a consent search to be legally valid.
Since consent searches typically occur on property controlled by the suspect, one of the most important factors in conducting a search for evidence is time. If there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred or will occur and the offense involves a computer, time is of the essence to find that evidence in the event that the suspect revokes consent. XWF provides speed of searching and preview capabilities that can help find evidence quickly and easily in those circumstances. If relevant evidence is found before a subject revokes consent, the computers can be seized and further legal process obtained to continue the search.
XWF can be used in the context of a search warrant to find additional information that traditional triage tools are not capable of finding, such as deleted files or more esoteric operating system artifacts. By initially using triage tools to narrow the focus of the investigation during a search and continuing to examine relevant computers in more detail with XWF, a clear understanding of the information on the computers can be used by investigators while on scene during interviews. Unlike a consent search, time is not as critical when reviewing digital media during the service of a search warrant as the premises are under the control of law enforcement for the duration of the search.
Regarding the supervision of parolees, especially those convicted of crimes involving the use of computers, the rules are usually different. Typically, parolees waive their right to searches while on parole as a condition of their parole. With this waiver in place, parole officers have the legal authority to enter and search property including computer systems. However, the terms of the condition of release govern the scope of the search. Time is not of the essence in these cases as the parolee cannot revoke consent as he or she would be in violation of the terms of the supervised release.
In all cases, the ability to quickly and easily search for evidence is still important as it ensures law enforcement is as minimally intrusive as possible. The following sections pertain to the scenarios described above, with the only difference being the ability of someone to revoke the consent to search.
Chapter
Legal
2015, The Basics of Digital Forensics (Second Edition)John Sammons
More advanced
Consent forms
In searches that hinge on consent, it often comes down to one side’s word over the other. What exactly was said, how it was said, and what the suspect understood at the time could all be scrutinized. A well-crafted consent-to-search form will go a long way in countering any attack on the search. The form should include details specifically relating to digital evidence. The form should seek permission to search not just computers but any storage media, including cell phones, manuals, printers, and more. The form should ask for permission to take these items from the location for offsite examination (Executive Office for United States Attorneys, 2009).
In the end, it’s important to remember that consent searches can be highly nuanced and heavily dependent on the facts or circumstances that arise during that specific incident. While searching without a warrant is sometimes a necessity, the best practice is to get a search warrant whenever possible. Your case will rest on much more solid ground with a warrant than without.
Third parties can sometimes consent to the search of private property. Roommates, spouses, and parents are just a few of the examples. Normally, if a device is shared, all parties have the authority to provide consent to search its common areas. In this situation, none of them would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas, since the device is shared with other people. The notion of common areas is significant. Areas such as those that are password-protected would not qualify as common areas. The third party would not be likely to have the authority to consent to a search of those areas. However, if the suspect has shared the password with the third party, then this constraint no longer applies. The suspect’s reasonable expectation of privacy has been greatly diminished.
It’s foreseeable that, in the end, the third party in question really didn’t have the authority to consent. This is not necessarily a deal breaker as far as the admissibility is concerned. Officers in the field can only do what a reasonable person would do when determining a third party’s legal ability to provide consent. If the suspect is present at the scene, a third party is not permitted to grant consent.
Spouses, under normal circumstances, can consent to the search of common areas. Parents may or may not be able to provide consent to search a child’s property. If the child in question is younger than eighteen years of age, parents are generally permitted to give consent. If the child is over age eighteen, it gets a bit more complicated. Factors that will affect this determination include the child’s age, whether or not the child pays rent, and what steps (if any) the person has taken to restrict access.
Technicians are often in the position of uncovering evidence during the course of their work. The courts have been split when deciding if the technician has the authority to consent. Officers may recreate the technician’s search or observe them retrace their steps. Officers may not, however, expand the technician’s search or direct the technician to look deeper. Should a technician locate evidence, those findings are normally used as the basis for a search warrant.
Exigent circumstances arise from time to time requiring the immediate seizure and possible search of a digital device. This is generally permitted under one of these three conditions: The evidence is under imminent threat of destruction, a threat puts law enforcement or the public in general in danger, or the suspect is expected to escape before a search warrant can be acquired. This exception may apply to the seizure of an item or device, but not automatically to the search of it. Once the item has been seized (secured), the exigency may no longer exist, thus requiring a search warrant to continue.
Officers have the right to charge suspects with evidence they see if the officers are legally permitted to be where they are, and if the item is immediately apparent to be incriminating. This is known as the “plain view doctrine.” This situation typically arises in a digital forensic context when an examiner is analyzing a drive for evidence of one crime and finds evidence of a completely different one. For instance, an examiner searching a hard drive for photos of stolen artwork comes across images of child pornography. At this juncture, the search should cease until a separate warrant pertaining to the possession of child pornography can be obtained.
Border searches and searches by probation and parole officers are afforded much more latitude than those conducted by police officers. From the court’s perspective, individuals entering the country can be searched with probable cause or even reasonable suspicion. The court recognizes the government’s need to secure the border from contraband and like material. Those individuals on probation or parole have less of an expectation of privacy than other citizens. For example, sex offenders may be prohibited from using the Internet during their supervised release. This stipulation would permit the parole or probation officer the authority to search the offender’s computer at any time to ensure compliance. There is even some case law permitting this type of search without these specific conditions in place.
Employees in the workplace may or may not possess a reasonable expectation of privacy on their work computers. This expectation will vary depending on the facts, including whether the employee is a government employee. Normally, officers can search an employee’s computer without a warrant if the employer or another co-worker (with shared authority) gives permission. Government employees are looked at a bit differently. That’s not to say that employers can’t search the employee’s system; it just means that the search must be “work-related, justified at their inception, and permissible in scope” (Executive Office for United States Attorneys, 2009).Show more
Chapter
Applicant Screening and Employee Socialization
2013, Security and Loss Prevention (Sixth Edition)Philip P. Purpura
Background Investigations
Numerous laws pertain to background investigations. The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 requires publicly traded companies to conduct background investigations, especially for applicants for positions involving financial matters, trade secrets, IT systems, and other sensitive areas. Employers must also adhere to privacy laws pertaining to the acquisition and protection of sensitive background information (e.g., financial, health).
The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1971 (FCRA), enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, is a major law that seeks to protect consumers from abuses of credit reporting agencies while controlling many aspects of background and other types of investigations. Rassas (2011: 224) writes: “The information that falls within the scope of the FCRA is very broad, and despite the name of the law, the Act applies to far more information than what would be contained in an individual’s credit report.” If a company conducts investigations with in-house investigators, instead of contracting the work to a service firm, the impact of the FCRA may be less burdensome. However, most companies cannot afford in-house investigators.
State laws should also be considered when conducting background checks, especially because of the possibility of being more restrictive than the FCRA. Acohido (2011) writes that many state legislatures are studying proposed bills to ease pressure on job applicants faced with the challenges of unemployment who are being judged on their creditworthiness and honesty by employers using credit checks.
Under the FCRA, an employer is required to notify a job applicant that a background report will be obtained from an outside firm. The employer must receive written permission from the applicant prior to seeking a report. Some states require that a free copy be provided to the applicant. An employer who takes “adverse action” (e.g., not hiring) against the applicant, based on the report (credit, criminal, or otherwise), must do the following: notify the applicant about the development, show the applicant the report, provide information on the applicant’s rights under the FCRA, and allow the applicant to dispute any inaccurate information in the report with the reporting agency. Following this process, if the employer still takes adverse action, the applicant must be notified of the action, with justification.
