Loss Prevention Research Council Weekly Series - Episode 184 - UK / USA crime and Self-Checkout Challenges
With Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D'Onofrio, and Tom Meehan
Starmer pledges crackdown on shoplifting in speech to retail workers
https://www.independent.co.uk/business/starmer-pledges-crackdown-on-shoplifting-in-speech-to-retail-workers-b2537206.html
Let me start this week with an update on retail crime from the other side of the pond. According to the newspaper the independent,
Sir Keir Starmer, the UK leader for the Labor Party, has promised retail workers he will crack down on crime and reverse what he called a Tory “Shoplifter’s Charter” in a speech.
Sir Keir said: “Today I am putting shoplifters on notice. You might get away with it under this weak Tory Government.
“We’ll put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police on the beat, tackling crime on your streets.
“We’ll scrap the Shoplifter’s Charter – the £200 rule that stops the police investigating theft in your workplace.
“And we will legislate to make sure assaulting and abusing shopworkers is a standalone criminal offence because you deserve to feel safe at work.”
Figures released last week showed the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales had risen to the highest level in 20 years.
Of the 408,690 police-recorded shoplifting offences in England and Wales in 2023 that were assigned an outcome, 16% (65,521) were charged or summonsed while 58% (238,794) of the investigations were closed with no suspect identified, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office data. This compares with 15% and 55% respectively in 2022.
Sir Keir said: “Nobody in Britain should be in any doubt about the scale of the crimewave on our high streets at the moment – the epidemic levels of shoplifting and the persistent plague of antisocial behaviour.”
The Media Say Crime Is Going Down. Don’t Believe It
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-say-crime-is-going-down-dont-believe-it-e5b07784?mod=article_inline
Switching topics and coming back to the United States, according to an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, Americans think crime is on the rise, but the media keep telling them they’re wrong. A Gallup survey last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that 61% of likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse, while only 13% think it’s getting better. Journalists purport to refute this by citing official crime statistics showing a downward trend.
In 2022, 31% of police departments nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York, didn’t report crime data to the FBI. In addition, in cities from Baltimore to Nashville, Tenn., the FBI is undercounting crimes those jurisdictions reported.
Another reason crimes reported to the police are falling is that arrest rates are plummeting. If victims don’t believe criminals will be caught and punished, they won’t bother reporting them. According to the FBI, if you take the five years preceding Covid-19 (2015-19) and compare them with 2022, the percentage of violent crimes in all cities resulting in an arrest fell from 44% to 35%. Among cities with more than one million people (where violent crime disproportionately occurs), arrest rates over the same period plunged from 44% to 20%.
Arrests for property crimes dived even more sharply. FBI data show that in 2022, 12% of reported property crimes in all cities resulted in an arrest. In cities of more than one million people, only 4.5% of reported property crimes in 2022 resulted in an arrest.
While the rate of reported violent crime fell 2.1% between 2021 and 2022, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that total violent crime—reported and nonreported—rose from 16.5 incidents to 23.5 per 1,000 people. Nonreported violent crime in 2022 exceeded the 2015-19 average by more than 17%.
Data reflect the scant consequences criminals face. During 2022 in cities with more than a million people, only 8.4% of all violent crimes (reported and unreported) and 1.4% of all property crimes resulted in an arrest. Not all those arrests resulted in charges.
Retailers Scale Back Self-Checkouts to Curb Irritation—and Theft
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/retailers-shake-up-self-checkouts-to-curb-irritationand-theft-faa795ed
For our final story this week, we again go to the Wall Street Journal which reported that Store operators are modifying how they use self-checkout stations in a bid to boost their bottom lines and improve the shopping experience for customers.
Some retailers are pulling kiosks out of stores as a way to keep a lid on theft. Others, including Target , Dollar General and the regional grocery chain Schnucks, have limited how many items customers can bring to self-checkouts to avoid bottlenecks and alleviate headaches for staff.
In March, Five Below Chief Executive Officer Joel Anderson said the retail chain limited the number of open self-checkout registers and positioned employees at more checkout lanes to assist customers.
Walmart pulled self-checkout lanes from a handful of stores in recent months based on feedback from associates and customers, a spokesman said.
About a fifth of people who used self-checkouts said they accidentally took an item without paying for it, according to a survey of 2,000 shoppers last year by LendingTree. Some 15% of self-checkout users admitted to stealing an item on purpose.
On social media, some users have posted videos of shoppers scanning a lower-price item instead of the higher-price item that should have been scanned.
“Shoplifting used to be mostly invisible,” said David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation, a trade group. “What we are seeing today are methods that are open and brazen.”
