Shoplifting

Shoplifting, large and small, tends to rise during times of crisis. As inflation makes things harder for more families, retail theft data will be a telling gauge for consumer distress. With prices rising exponentially, expectations are that this will become even more of a problem as long as high inflation persists. And it is’t just shops that thieves turned to as food prices spike. Brits who grow their own fruit and vegetables, on plots known as allotments, during the financial crisis of 2008/9 had to introduce security patrols after a jump in thefts.

Shoplifting is up markedly since the pandemic began and at higher levels than in past economic downturns (at least in the USA), according to an article published in The Washington Post in December 2020. But what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken — more staples like bread, pasta and baby formula. 54 million Americans were estimated to struggle with hunger in 2020, a 45 percent increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pushing more people to use food banks. In the U.K. it is meat, nappies, razor blades and deodorant, which are the most frequently stolen items.

While it’s impossible to profile shoplifters – the crime transcends gender, age and all socio-demographic strata, and about one in 11 people in the USA commit it – evidence suggests the rich actually do steal more than the poor. According to a scientific paper published in 2008, people with incomes of $70,000 shoplift 30% more than those earning $20,000 a year. This also is confirmed by figures recently published in Switzerland, where apparently some 21% of the top earners haven’t paid for something in a restaurant (I presume this would be the self-service type). And 39% of Swiss millionaires have used public transport without paying. In general it seems that men are more inclined not to pay than women.

But it’s not only shoppers who help themselves to goods without paying: A full 95 percent of employees steal from their employers, according to a 2013 anonymous survey of 500 retail and service industry employees by Kessler International, a forensic accounting firm. Now while these figures are almost a decade old, a European survey in 2017 found that theft and fraud by their own staff were the second most frequent source of losses for employers – and more than 75% of retailers polled experienced theft by a supplier such as, for example, a contractor providing cleaning or security services.

But then don’t we as consumers sometimes feel robbed or cheated as well? When production costs of a product rise, some producers revert to what is known as shrinkflation or package downsizing. Most people won’t notice small changes to the size of a product. In the U.K., for example, there are now only 10 instead of 12 Jaffa cakes to a packet, and Andrex toilet paper has apparently 21 sheets less per roll (so I read, I didn’t count them myself). Or Coca Cola, which changed the content of its 500 ml bottle to 450 ml for the same price.

And as citizens not least in the U.K. have found out during the years of austerity preceding the pandemic, where the same amount of tax paid provided ever less services. Admittedly this trend was reversed over the past two years, where councils had to provide evermore services at the assistance while at the same time the tax income shrunk. But, as inflation bites and households feel the growing cost pressures not only in their weekly grocery shop but also when filling up their cars and heating their homes, more people may once again revert to shoplifting to make ends meet.