Shoplifting

Shoplifting (also known as commercial burglary) is theft of merchandise for sale in a shop, or of money from the cash register of a retail establishment, by an ostensible patron. It is one of the most common crimes for police and courts.

Most shoplifters are amateurs; however, there are people and groups who make their living from shoplifting, and they tend to be more skilled. Some individuals shoplift in an effort to resist selling their labor, and/or to protest corporate power.^[who?] These individuals target—often exclusively—chain stores; Wal-Mart is an especially popular target for political shoplifters in America. Sainsbury's and Tesco are primary targets in the UK (see Evasion).

The costs of shoplifting are not always absorbed by the targeted company, but instead may result in price increases.^[1] Therefore, shoplifting ultimately harms paying consumers.

A common slang term for shoplifting in Australia and the United States is "five-finger discount." The "five-finger" aspect of the term refers to the fact there are five fingers on the hand which is used to grab the stolen merchandise. In the US, it is often referred to as "jacking" or "racking" and in the UK as "nicking" or "chaving." Professional shoplifters or organized shoplifting groups are often referred to as "boosters."

==Economic impact and response from retailers and city and state governments

Retailers report that shoplifting has significant effect on their bottom line, stating that about 0.6% of all inventory disappears to shoplifters. In 2001 it was claimed that shoplifting cost US retailers $25 million a day. Other observers, however, believe industry shoplifting numbers to be greatly exaggerated. Studies have found that over half of what is reported as shoplifting is either employee theft or fraud. Of course, in apprehended shoplifting, the merchandise is generally recovered by the retailers and there is often no loss to the store owner when the merchandise is surrendered to the store by the suspects, and returned to stock to be sold for profit.

The cities and states of The United States believe that shoplifting has a negative economic impact on the shopping public and that if shoplifting can be deterred through arrests/tickets and diversions of "first offender" shoplifters who are presumed to be guilty of larceny shoplifting when they pass final checkouts and exit to the outside without paying for merchandise, second attempts to steal can be deterred and shoplifting as a whole will be deterred to serve the greater good of society. The greater good will be served because the shopping public will then pay less for the merchandise they purchase from the nation's retailers because the retailers will share their profits realized from city detterence programs and state civil recovery laws in terms of lower prices for the shopping public.

There are no reliable statistics to support this assumption but there have been statistics produced by loss prevention experts who indicate that the arrest and/or ticketing and diversion of first-offender shoplifters for stealing or larceny does prevent recidivism However, neither the cities, nor the states, nor the retailers warn the shopping public about the criminal and civil consequences of shoplifting in the nation's retail stores and FIRST attempts to shoplift have not been deterred to the extent that there is any decrease overall in the statistics produced concerning the occurrence of shoplifting in American retail stores.

Shoplifting is the offense of larceny, misdemeanor or felony larceny, when prosecuted and defended in the state and federal courts. Because shoplifting has been reported to be such a great problem for the retailers, over the past thirty to forty years, all of the states of The United States have passed special statutes that subsidize the retailers for the problem of shoplifting and the costs of their security personnel to reduce the economic impact on the retailers and on the consumers. The cities, to reduce the economic impact of shoplifting on the retailers, have licensed the retailers' loss Prevention personnel with the power of arrest outside of final checkouts and store premises and the retailers are protected from lawsuits for false arrest and malicious prosecution or excessive force in detentions for shoplifting made by bonded and city-licensed security officers who work as undercover loss prevention personnel in the nation's retail stores.

To further reduce the economic impact on the retailers and the shopping public because of Shoplifting, the States, one by one over the past 30 to 40 years, since the late seventies and early eighties, have passed special CIVIL laws that subsidize the retailers through the provision of laws that permit the Retailers to write demand letters to those suspects who have been detained for shoplifting that ask for money damages that are authorized under the state laws for the offense of shoplifting, under the threat of prosecuting the "shoplifting event" in the Civil Courts.

These special laws commonly identified as Civil Recovery for Shoplifting not only permit the retailers to recover and retain the stolen merchandise surrendered by the suspects to undercover loss prevention personnel who are licensed security agents of the city, but also permit the retailers to demand minimum damages under the statutes that range from $50.00 to $200.00 with maximums of thousands of dollars. These statutes generally allow the collection of attorney fees as well, even for the demand letters, because, as indicated by the public records, there have been few if any actual lawsuits filed in the courts to collect the civil damages as provided under these somewhat new laws. The civil demands by the retailers are made out of view of the courts and there are no government statistics available as to how many millions of dollars are collected yearly under these special Civil Recovery Statutes.

Therefore, the negative economic impact of shoplifting on the retailers has been reduced greatly through the use of the state civil recovery laws and tax advantages, and the city criminaltickets/arrests for larceny. But, the economic impact of the criminal arrests of first offender shoplifters has impacted on the budgets of the City Police Departments and the City Courts and the taxpayers if the bail monies and the fines do not compensate the cities and the towns for the arrests and/or tickets issued and the city resources that are used when city commissioned police travel to the security offices of the retail stores to arrest or ticket suspects on probable cause of committing petit or grand larceny.

Legal aspects

Rights of store operators

In the state of California, and in most cases the rest of the United States and other countries, store employees and managers have certain powers of arrest. Store officials may detain for investigation (for a reasonable length of time), the person whom they have probable cause to believe is attempting to take or has unlawfully taken merchandise. Generally, in the United States, the store employees who detain suspects are licensed by the city police authority with limited powers of arrest and have the power to initiate criminal arrests and/or civil sanctions, or both, depending upon the policy of the retailer.^{[citation needed]}

In the state of California, merchants may conduct a limited search to recover the item by those authorized to make the detention. Only packages, shopping bags, handbags or other property in the immediate possession of the person detained may be searched, but not any clothing worn by the person because this would require a search warrant under the law.^{[citation needed]} Licensed security police in the United States can, under the law, ask suspects to VOLUNTARILY empty their purses, pockets, wallets, handbags, etc. and most first offenders and amateur shoplifters generally agree to do this when suggested.

Rights of shoplifters

An accused shoplifter has rights that protects him or her from being falsely detained. An accused is subject to many of the same rights as would be present in an arrest from sworn law enforcement, such as the right to remain silent.

Anti-shoplifting options

Closed circuit television

CCTV monitoring is an important anti shoplifting method. Retailers focusing on loss prevention often devote most of their resources to this technology. Unfortunately if no one is specifically watching the cameras you will only find out at the end what was stolen and not apprehend the shoplifter at the time of theft. CCTV is very effective if used in conjunction with EAS as the EAS system will alert of a potential shoplifter and the video will provide amble proof to procecute. shoplifter and the EAS

Electronic article surveillance

Electronic article surveillance is second only to CCTV in popularity amongst retailers looking for inventory protection. EAS refers to the security tags that attach to a garment and cause an alarm to sound on exiting the store. Regularly, even when an alarm does sound, a shoplifter walks out casually and is not confronted if no guards are present. This is due to the high number of false alarms, especially in malls, due to "tag pollution" whereby non-deactivated tags from other stores set off the alarm. This can be overcome with newer systems and a properly trained staff. Some new systems either dont alarm from "tag pollution" or they produce a specific alarm when a customer enters the store with a non-deactivated tag so that store personal can remove or deactivate it so it does not produce a false alarm when exiting the store.

Phony shoppers

Loss Prevention personnel will patrol the store acting as if they are real shoppers. They may try on merchandise and browse the racks, all the while looking for signs of shoplifting and looking for possible shoplifters. Many large retail companies utilize this technique, and will watch a shoplifter conceal an item then stop them after they have exited the store.

Uniformed guards

The presence of uniformed guards acts as a deterrent to shoplifting activity and they are mostly used by high end retail establishments.

Exit inspections

Shoppers in some large stores cannot leave the premises until cart contents are checked against the register tape. In most of the US, shoppers are under no obligation to accede to a search unless the employee has reasonable grounds to suspect shoplifting.^[2]^[3]

Close customer service

Floor attendants are instructed to greet, follow, and offer help with customer shopping. Shoplifters are not comfortable with this attention and will go somewhere else where they can work unnoticed.

BOB mirrors

Bottom of basket mirrors are commonly used in grocery stores where the checkout lanes are close together and the cashier might be unable to see the entire basket to ensure payment of all items.

Locked merchandise

Some merchandise will be in a locked case requiring an employee to get items at a customer's request. The customer is either required to purchase the merchandise immediately or it is left at the checkout area for the customer to purchase when finishing shopping. This prevents the customer from having a chance to conceal the item.

Another way of locking merchandise, especially popular in liquor stores, is to place a secure, store-administered hard-plastic cap on a regular bottle top. Once purchased the clerk will remove the cap with a store key. It is not otherwise easily removable.

Personnel policy

The choice of store and security personnel can strongly affect the ability of shoplifters to succeed. All personnel must be trained in the techniques shoplifters use to steal merchandise and the proper actions to take.

Famous cases

A famous legal case involving shoplifting occurred in 2001 when actress Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Beverly Hills, California. Ryder was eventually convicted of misdemeanor theft and vandalism and will be eligible for espungement of the conviction after finishing probation. Ryder was originally convicted by a jury of felony larceny/vandalism and was sentenced in a nationally televised California Superior Court proceeding in December of 2002. ^[4] In 2003, Will & Grace actress Shelley Morrison (who played Rosario Salazar) was arrested for shoplifting at a Robinsons-May store in California; the charges were later dropped. In early 2006, former White House aide Claude Allen was arrested for an alleged return scam at a Target store in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Jean Eaton, while mayor of Albert Lea, MN, was accused of stealing hundreds of dollars worth of clothing from Marshall Field's stores in Rochester, Edina and St. Cloud in an alleged clothing swap scam. Eaton had claimed that police acted illegally when they executed a search warrant that gathered evidence used to support a felony theft charge against her. Eaton later reached a plea agreement with Olmsted County prosecutors to have the felony charges dropped, by entering into an adult diversion program, which includes restitution, and possible community service.

'Atypical Theft Offenders'

Some shoplifters (who are almost invariably, and erroneously, labelled as suffering from kleptomania) are persons who clinical investigator Dr. Will Cupchik has labelled 'Atypical Theft Offenders.' These usually honest persons may steal in response to personally meaningful losses and/or other stressors. His book, Why Honest People Shoplift or Commit Other Acts of Theft (2002) provides data and conclusions of two studies conducted by Dr. Cupchik, as well as assessment and treatment methods. The major reasons that these persons should not be labelled as kleptomaniacs are that there are virtually always external triggering events identified as having preceded the theft activity, and because the stealing is virtually always an act of vengeance carried out in anger (although seldom recognized as such by the offender). The existence of an external trigger and the feelings of anger and desire for vengeance are factors that, according to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, would exclude the diagnosis of 'kleptomania.'

A small number of shoplifters may be influenced by their use of benzodiazapene medications.^[5]

Shoplifting in popular culture

Morrissey, along with his band The Smiths, wrote a song entitled "Shoplifters of the World Unite," with a pro-shoplifting theme.

Characters in the movie Garden State returned an unbought set of cutlery for a forty dollar refund.

Green Day has a song called Shoplifter. It is a B-Side to their American Idiot single.

References

^ http://www.nrf.com/content/press/release2002/costshoplifting.htm
^ http://www.lps1.com/bw.digg.html
^ http://www.die.net/musings/bestbuy/
^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3821355.stm
^ Williams R, Dalby JT. (1986). "Benzodiazepines and shoplifting". International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. 30: 35-39.