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Those Poor Darling Shoplifters
Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Don’t Look Directly At It

January 16, 2025 65 Comments

And in the world of The Progressive Retail Experience: 

Walgreens CEO describes drawback of anti-shoplifting strategy: “When you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them.”

From Fortune magazine:

After reporting a 52% increase in shrink, or lost inventory, in 2020 and 2021, Walgreens invested in increased security that proved to be “largely ineffective.” And while many drug stores have taken to locking up commonly looted goods, Wentworth admitted, “When you lock things up… you don’t sell as many of them. We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”

During the lengthy interview quoted above, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth hints at the development of “creative” solutions for customers demoralised by unimpeded thieving and the subsequent lockdown status of many stores. Paying customers, a seemingly shrinking demographic, will, we’re assured, be offered a “better… in-store experience” via “new scheduling optimisation logic” and “leveraging our omnichannel capabilities.”

Oddly, Mr Wentworth, whose business is planning to close another 450 stores during the coming year, avoids any use of the words shoplifting, looting, or theft.

Perhaps he finds such terms unsavoury, much like the Observer‘s Martha Gill, the Guardian‘s Owen Jones, and academic Gloria Laycock, according to whom, the law-abiding should resign themselves to ever more inconvenience and social degradation, and being alienated from their own neighbourhoods, because punishing habitual criminals – who are, we’re told, “traumatised” and “vulnerable” – is somehow unfair and terribly unfashionable.

Update: 

Commenter [+] adds,

So normal people don’t like shopping in a prison surrounded by ferals? Who would have guessed?

It has to be said, the prospect of shopping for shampoo in a store where pretty much everything, including shampoo, is under lock and key and requires elaborate and protracted negotiation in order to actually buy it, and in which looters might at any time appear and start smashing up the place, with little opposition, does not entice. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

John D observes, not without cause,

If a store has even basic stuff locked up it’s a sign the neighbourhood is unsafe and you should leave.

It doesn’t exactly bode well. And as noted previously,

The preferred, progressive trajectory, as implied above, entails a more demoralised, more dangerous, low-trust society. In which pretty much anything one might wish to buy will be out of reach or shuttered away, and in which every customer will by default be treated as suspicious… We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.

And being insulted in this way, as if one were uncivilised and not to be trusted, seems unlikely to invite warm feelings or repeat custom.

Quetzalovercoatl adds,

The killing part of this is that the answer to the problem is apparent to all, but no one in power will take the necessary steps. It’s almost like they’ve never seen It’s Not About the Nail.

At which point, readers may wish to cast an eye over the previous shoplifting post, linked above, in which you almost have to marvel at the mental contortions, the elaborate contrivance. Whereby this increasingly aggressive and routine predation is romanticised, despite all evidence to the contrary, including countless videoed examples and the use of machetes. And in which, the aforementioned Observer columnist dismisses the thieving and looting as “relatively trivial,” as businesses close and entire neighbourhoods are demoralised and robbed of amenities.

Mental contortions in which the obvious, practical, and traditional response to such behaviour is hastily waved aside as “exactly the wrong approach” and “the worst instincts of the electorate.” As if arresting and imprisoning habitual thieves, thereby interrupting their criminal adventures, should be considered a total failure and unworthy of the effort. Instead, our Observer columnist and her equally progressive peers blame the retailers, the victims, and suggest more padlocks, and more barriers on shelves of shampoo.

Oh, and “decriminalise shop theft,” of course.

As if that weren’t already a common assumption of those doing the looting. And as if the lack of prompt punishment, and the consequent air of impunity, somehow wouldn’t embolden the creatures being so grotesquely indulged. A boldness with no obvious upper limit. As if signs of weakness in one area of life, this cowed impotence, couldn’t possibly inspire other kinds of crime and antisocial behaviour. As if the response could never, ever be, “Ooh, what else can I get away with?”

All to avoid enforcing even the most basic standards of behaviour. Of civilisation. Because, what, somehow that would look bad…?

For those unfamiliar with The Progressive Retail Experience, the series to date, numbering some 608 entries, can be found here.

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Reading time: 4 min
Written by: David
Policing Politics Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Why Don’t You Welcome Further Degradation?

August 28, 2023 93 Comments

In the comments, Nikw211 steers us to the pages of the Observer, where Ms Martha Gill has some thoughts on shoplifting.

First, some setting of the scene:

Within corner-shops and supermarkets and department stores, a new mood of lawlessness circulates. Owners of small shops have long complained that they are being treated as larders; now the owners of large ones have joined them.

Co-op despairs that shoplifting is “out of control”; along with antisocial behaviour incidents, the crime has increased by a third in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, John Lewis has taken to offering free coffees to passing [police] officers. “Just having a police car parked outside can make people think twice about shoplifting from our branches,” the head of security for the John Lewis Partnership has said, with more than a hint of desperation.

And,

Earlier this month, there was the “TikTok looting” of Oxford Street, where teens ran amok around stores after a thread urging people to “rob JD Sports” went viral. The trend has a longer sweep: in the past six years, shop thefts in Britain have more than doubled.

All rather grim. If not entirely surprising to readers familiar with this blog’s Progressive Retail Experience series. The collection to date, some 495 entries, can be found here.

Ah, that mood of lawlessness.

Ms Gill links to an article including figures by the British Retail Consortium showing a steep increase in predation. Unmentioned by Ms Gill, however, is the equally marked rise in retail staff experiencing physical abuse, sexual assault, and threats with weapons. Thieves, it turns out, are “becoming bolder and more aggressive” as shoplifting has blurred into mob robbery and open, gleeful looting. Though, again, this detail is not explored in the Observer.

Ms Gill, you see, is in search of less obvious, more exotic victims:

What to do about shoplifting? It’s a delicate subject. Shoplifting is not quite like other crimes. Pilfering, purloining, filching, snaffling – it is by nature relatively trivial 

Retailers who’ve been sexually assaulted or threatened with machetes may, I suspect, take a different view. And whether the person wielding the machete could be construed as “vulnerable,” a feat accomplished in the Observer article, may not, at the time, have been foremost in their minds.

[M]ost of all, shoplifting is a crime that seems to reflect social need: it rises when the economy dips. The current spate seems partly fuelled by the cost of living crisis. Starving your population and then “cracking down” on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable. 

Except, of course, that studies on the subject repeatedly point out that the majority of shoplifting is not done out of some noble desperation, but rather for kicks, or status, or for black market resale, including the aforementioned baby formula. In reports on the phenomenon and its common causes – say, by the same British Retail Consortium – the words alcohol abuse and drugs crop up frequently, as do the words gang activity and organised crime.

By most estimates, shoplifters are on average caught around 2% of the time, usually after dozens, even hundreds, of thefts; and of those apprehended, roughly half are turned over to the police for prosecution. The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention adds, “While the romanticised face of shoplifting is the starving parent stealing bread to provide for a child, the reality is this is rarely the case.”

Apparently, Ms Gill could not find space in her article for such insights. Instead, Observer readers are treated with a detour into the world of Dickens and literary solidarity with shoplifters – “quite often we are on the side of the light-fingered lifter.” Indeed, we’re told that shoplifting can be construed, by those so inclined, as an act of “social defiance.” We are, however, reminded that small businesses should, perhaps, where possible, be spared such predation – and that, “stealing is not always the best way… to address inequality.”

Eventually, we arrive at the offering of solutions. Naturally, this being the Observer, rumblings of punitive consequences are frowned upon. Jail time for repeat offenders is, we’re assured, “exactly the wrong approach.”

Says Ms Gill,

Not only does “cracking down” on shoplifters through the criminal justice system raise difficult moral problems, it doesn’t even work. 

What those difficult moral problems might be is not made entirely clear. Nor is it obvious why imprisoning habitual thieves, thereby interrupting their criminal adventures, should be considered a total failure and unworthy of the effort.

Instead, with some contrivance, responsibility for thievery is laid elsewhere:

Once, goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking. Automated self-check-out means the customer in effect monitors their own behaviour. 

Retailers, it seems, are asking for it. What with those short skirts. Sorry, accessible goods.

Ms Gill then cites academic Gloria Laycock, whose solution to the swell in shoplifting and mob robbery is suitably unobvious and therefore statusful:

“A radical policy might be to decriminalise shop theft,” says Laycock, tongue only half in cheek. “This would put the onus directly on the shops, which could employ the measures that actually work, like putting goods back behind counters.” 

Quite how a supermarket might function with all of its goods rendered inaccessible, hidden away under lock and key, is, sadly, left to the imagination.

The general idea, presumably, is that the rest of us, the law-abiding, should resign ourselves to ever more inconvenience and social degradation, and being increasingly alienated from our own neighbourhoods, because punishing habitual criminals, even those armed with machetes, is terribly unfashionable. At least in certain circles. Those inhabited by academics and Observer columnists, for instance.

And so, the preferred, progressive trajectory, as implied above, entails a more demoralised, more dangerous, low-trust society. In which pretty much anything one might wish to buy will be out of reach or shuttered away, and in which every customer will by default be treated as suspicious. Because apparently, we mustn’t acknowledge a difference between the criminal and the law-abiding. Except, that is, to imagine them as more vulnerable than we are.

We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.

Ms Gill is not alone, of course. According to her Guardian colleague Owen Jones, expecting persistent shoplifters to face consequences for their actions is now among “the worst instincts of the electorate.” Because shoplifters are “traumatised,” apparently. The real victims of the drama.

At which point, a thought occurs. If repeated thieving is so high-minded and so easily excused, perhaps Ms Gill and Mr Jones would be good enough to publish their home addresses, the whereabouts of any valuables, and the times at which they’re likely to be out, or at least preoccupied or unconscious.

Or do our betters only disdain other people’s property?

Update, via the comments:

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Reading time: 6 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Shoplifter’s Indignation

March 7, 2023 146 Comments

“This is not okay,” says she.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Variation on a theme.

What’s striking in both cases, and doubtless in countless others, is the almost farcical air of entitlement. The ludicrous harrumphing. Sort of, “How dare you physically stop me from stealing your property!”

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Politics Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Our Betters Make Laws

December 13, 2020 131 Comments

Welcome to Seattle, where a dislike of being robbed, or seeing others being robbed, is disdained as “anti-poverty bias.” 

It’s called “the poverty defence,” and would not only make stealing legal, but apparently fencing items as well, and would cover over 100 misdemeanour crimes.

Because enabling criminals and demoralising their victims will result in flourishing neighbourhoods, a boom in employment, and a future that’s more progressive and compassionate. Full of hugs and puppies.

Update: via the comments: 

As noted in the piece, the most enthusiastic supporters of the proposal, the ones disdaining objections as “anti-poverty bias,” are remarkably contemptuous of the people whose lives will be degraded, should the proposal succeed. And who almost certainly have a much clearer understanding of the proposal’s supposed beneficiaries, having encountered them first-hand, most likely more than once. But the compulsion to indulge criminal choices, from a safe distance, and to then bask in the subsequent in-group elevation, is, for some, quite strong, despite the contortions it can entail.

And regardless of the consequences for the victims of such posturing.

Update 2:

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Written by: David
Anthropology Policing Politics Those Poor Darling Shoplifters

Above Us, Our Betters

March 17, 2020 68 Comments

Speaking, as we were, of enthusiasts of crime, meet communist poet Wendy Trevino:

A super-brave warrior for a brighter tomorrow.

When I see tweets of this nature – repeated slogan, repeated slogan, repeated slogan – I tend to think the tweeter is either adolescent or unwell. Ms Trevino is supposedly a grown woman. One who appears to have a complicated relationship with her father. Sometimes the clichés are just too on-the-nose. When not advocating shoplifting and being titillated by visions of collapsing social norms, Ms Trevino, our communist poet and Antifa Gal, wants us to know how pleased she is by criminals escaping prison and taking hostages. What said prisoners may have done to be there in the first place, and what they may do again now that they’re at large, doesn’t seem to interest her.

Update, via the comments:

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.