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Handbook on Crime Shoplifting This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 01 Oct 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK Handbook on Crime Fiona Brookman, Mike Maguire, Harriet Pierpoint, Trevor Bennett Shoplifting Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781843929680-5 Nick Tilley Published online on: 01 Feb 2010 How to cite :- Nick Tilley. 01 Feb 2010, Shoplifting from: Handbook on Crime Routledge Accessed on: 01 Oct 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781843929680-5 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Chapter 3 Shoplifting Nick Tilley The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the term ‘shoplifting’ goes back to 1680. Some people prefer the term ‘shop theft’ on the grounds that shoplifting might seem to trivialise the offence, which is indeed that of theft, although from shops rather than any other target. What distinguishes shoplifting from burglary is that the perpetrator has legitimate access to the premises from which the stolen goods are taken. What distinguishes it from robbery is that no use or threat of violence is involved. What distinguishes it from staff theft is that the person committing the offence is not employed by the shop. In short, shoplifting refers to the crime of theft, where customers (or those posing as customers) steal from retail outlets to which they have legitimate access. In this chapter the terms ‘shoplifting’, ‘shop theft’ and ‘customer theft’ will be used interchangeably, although shoplifting will generally be preferred on account of its brevity, common usage and long history. Issues of the seriousness, or triviality, of the offence will be considered in due course. Patterns of shoplifting and their measurement What can be said with some confidence is that shoplifting is a high-volume offence. It is tricky to determine exactly how much of it there is. Different methods of measurement yield widely varying estimates. Problems of measurement mean that estimates of trends and distributions by victim, target and offender are subject to substantial uncertainty. An obvious starting point is recorded crime trends. Theft from shops has been returned as a separate offence in England and Wales since 1934, although there are earlier reports of shoplifting as a common offence in London from the eighteenth century and also in Paris, Boston and New York from the nineteenth century (Segrave 2001). Figure 3.1 shows the trends in recorded shop theft since 1934 in England and Wales. It shows that numbers of incidents grew rapidly from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. There was a substantial dip between 48 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 19:26 01 Oct 2021; For: 9781843929680, chapter3, 10.4324/9781843929680-5 Shoplifting 1985 and 1989, which was largely an artefact of the informal means then used to deal with shoplifters (Farrington and Burrows 1993), after which numbers of recorded incidents rose rapidly once more, before levelling off from the early 1990s. Since the Second World War the volume of recorded shop theft incidents has grown more quickly than other types of property/acquisitive crime. Figure 3.2 shows the trends in each, indexed to 100 in 1945. There are distinct difficulties in using recorded shop thefts as an indicator of the real level of shop theft. Many incidents will not be noticed, and of those noticed many will not be reported to the police. The police may then, 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 – 09 1934 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2 2004/5 1 99/ 00 Figure 3.1 Trends in recorded shop theft England and Wales 1934–2008 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 /5 4 1945 1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2000/1 200 Shop theft Other theft Figure 3.2 Indexed trends in shop theft and other theft 1945–2008 49 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 19:26 01 Oct 2021; For: 9781843929680, chapter3, 10.4324/9781843929680-5 Handbook on Crime of course, not record all incidents reported to them. What is distinctive about shop theft, as compared to other incidents where crime may not be reported or recorded, is the fact that many incidents may not be noticed. The retailer may know that they have suffered ‘shrinkage’, but will generally be unable to distinguish shop thefts from other sources such as theft by shop workers, shortfalls in delivery and wastage. Commercial victimisation surveys comprise one alternative to recorded crime data for measuring levels of shop theft. These ask a randomly selected sample of businesses about the crimes they have suffered in the previous year. The Commercial Victimisation Survey (CVS) of 2002 found that shops in England and Wales had experienced an average (median) of 25 incidents of shop theft each over the previous 12 months (Shury et al. 2005). Based on the survey findings it was estimated that there were 11,493,000 incidents of shop theft in 2002. To put this in perspective, that figure is close to the BCS estimate for all crime against individuals and households in the same year, which stood at 12,618,000, and more than twice the total for all recordable crime in 2001–2, which stood at 5,525,000 (Nicholas et al. 2007). There were just 306,596 recorded shop thefts in 2001/2, one in 37 of those estimated to have taken place according to the CVS. Commercial victimisation surveys have their own weaknesses. As already indicated, owners and managers of shops may not know the composition of their shrinkage. They have no way of being sure of the number of shop theft incidents they have suffered. In replying to questions in commercial victimisation surveys they are making estimates which may be systematically skewed in one direction or the other. One alternative to recorded crime data and survey findings for estimating levels of shop theft is to observe shoppers and count the numbers who engage in shoplifting. This method was adopted by Buckle and Farrington in a painstaking study of a random sample of shoppers in a small British department store in Peterborough. These shoppers were followed and observed by two researchers working together to try to ensure that they did not miss instances of shop theft. Altogether just over 500 shoppers were observed while they were in the store for an average 6.9 minutes. Nine of the 503 shoppers (1.8 per cent) stole at least one item while in the store and none was apprehended. The authors estimate that, given the throughput of customers, over 500 items per week were taken from the store. By comparing the number of recorded crime incidents in the area in which the store was located with the estimate for the store and roughly estimating the proportion of incidents that could be attributed to this one store, Buckle and Farrington concluded that the police record ‘between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000 shoplifting incidents’ (Buckle and Farrington 1984: 69). Assuming that these ratios continue to apply, this would mean that the real figures for shop theft in 2001/2 in England and Wales would fall between 30,659,600 and 306,596,000, which comprise respectively 24 and 243 times the total number of crimes covered by the BCS. Buckle and Farrington’s (1984) intensive study was meticulous in its design and execution. Yet it was, perforce, small-scale. They looked at only one store over a short period (three weeks) in one town and tracked only 500 50 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 19:26 01 Oct 2021; For: 9781843929680, chapter3, 10.4324/9781843929680-5 Shoplifting shoppers. Questions might therefore be asked about its representativeness. However, a later study in Bedford using the same basic methods, although finding differences in the details of the patterns of offending, came to a similar conclusion about the ratio of recorded to actual numbers of shoplifting incidents (Farrington 1999). There appear to be few positive reasons to doubt Buckle and Farrington’s basic findings. All the available evidence indicates that there is an eye-watering volume of shop theft in England and Wales, dwarfing all other crime. What gets stolen? Clarke (1999) uses the acronym CRAVED to describe the attributes of goods that tend to be stolen. CRAVED refers to Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable and Disposable. Expensive, small, high-demand, consumer goods fit the bill. Clarke quotes an American study (Hayes 1997) of what tends to be taken from various types of shop. Table 3.1 provides some examples. In Britain, Walsh (1978) paints a picture of what was stolen in Exeter in 1975. He distinguishes between high risk, medium risk and low risk shops, and what is taken from them, as shown in Table 3.2. As part of a project looking at differing means of preventing shoplifting Farrington et al.
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