@gwynnion

What America's shoplifting panic is really about | CNN Business

I think the companies are more afraid of what we might do than what we are currently doing on the shoplifting front and are exaggerating the problem so they can be ready when the actual riots start.

This is a good article about the issue and how it goes back over a hundred years, pretty much as long as there has been retail.

Shrink also includes employee theft, damaged products, administrative errors, vendor fraud and other factors.

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Although shoplifting increased in some cities during the first half of the year compared to pre-pandemic levels, there is no clear national rise in shoplifting, according to a new analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan criminal justice policy organization.

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"The overall data doesn't indicate a great shift in the average shoplifting event, but the brazen ransacking incidents, coordinated on social media and captures on video, clearly suggest that there is a sense of lawlessness about," said Adam Belb, The CEO of the Council for Criminal Justice.

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Mentions of "organized retail crime" on companies' earnings calls increased 43% from January through August of this year compared to 2022, the Chamber of Commerce found.
However, the overwhelming majority of shoplifting incidents involve on or two people, not groups. More than 95% of shoplifting incidents in 2019, 2020, and 2021 involved one or two people, and 0.1% involved more than six people, according to a Council for Criminal Justice analysis of shoplifting reports.
Shoplifting incidents involving assault or other crime constitutes less than 2% of shoplifting incidents, the analysis found.

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"If punishment was the key to public safety, we'd be the safest country in the world," said Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "You get more public safety by working on underlying problems."