Thief mobs and self-checkout shoplifters: Is society in a state of moral decay, or are stores exaggerating the problem?

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — The figure was stunning: $45 billion lost annually in America to “organized retail crime” alone — mobs of thieves, for example, ransacking stores for goods to be resold online — not to mention tens of millions more lost to everything from a wave of self-checkout shoplifters to theft by stores’ own employees.

There was just one problem: It wasn’t true.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) retracted the claim after extensive reporting — calling into question the figures — by Daphne Howland of Retail Dive.

Howland reported the organization conflated figures from different years and seemed to attribute numbers for all kinds of “shrink” — including theft from individual shoplifters and store employees and problems that aren’t theft at all, like products breaking or spoiling — to organized retail theft.

“The problem is not nearly what they were saying in terms of dollars lost to retailers,” Howland said.

The NRF said it didn’t have a spokesperson available to comment for this story but referred a reporter to its 2023 National Retail Security Study, which now includes a total current figure for shrink due to all causes but doesn’t itemize how much of the total number is due to what cause.

Why might retailers overestimate the problem?

“If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Howland said, characterizing what sources have contributed to her reporting. “If you’re in the loss prevention industry, you’re probably ex-law enforcement, and it looks like crime” rather than other reasons items go unsold. She said no one has a reliable breakdown of how shrink occurs.

Howland emphasized: Theft is a big problem — just not as big of one, based on her reporting, as retailers have often said.

Howland and some retail analysts also wonder whether chains like Target have overstated the degree to which theft has driven some store closures. Why?

Howland said she couldn’t say for sure, but “people hate it when stores close, so maybe they feel like they need a good excuse.” She said store closures have tended to disproportionately impact store formats — like smaller city-center locations — where big-box retailers have struggled more in general compared to their suburban strip-mall strongholds.

Target didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Neither did Walmart, which has closed self-checkout lanes in some stores because of shoplifting sometimes attributed to individuals rather than to organized retail crime.

Howland said she doesn’t doubt the susceptibility of self-checkout lanes to shoplifting, but total retail shrink as a percentage of all sales hasn’t increased over the years, which leads her to believe theft as a percentage of all sales hasn’t risen significantly either. In other words, different people might be stealing — or the same people might be stealing in different ways — but overall, people probably aren’t stealing significantly more, relative to the size of the industry.

Marie Helweg-Larsen, a social psychology professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, said she’s similarly skeptical of the idea society is in a state of moral decay, although she does think self-checkout lanes could be encouraging some people to steal even if they wouldn’t otherwise do so.

The reason: People rationalize nearly everything they do wrong, she said, and self-checkout lanes can facilitate that.

“You might be able to provide a excuse for skipping an item by saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t notice’ or ‘my bad; I made a minor mistake.'” Helweg-Larsen said. “That can serve as an excuse, both perhaps in the moment of getting caught — but also an excuse to yourself.”

She said that’s true of some people who wouldn’t even shoplift non-violently in other ways. Why would someone who wouldn’t put a candy bar directly in their pocket purposely not scan an item?

“‘I’m just taking a discount on this item’ or ‘I am just taking my own compensation for doing the store’s job for them,'” Helweg-Larsen said, characterizing the rationalizations people use. “So this kind of self-justification is common in all kinds of areas where people do dumb things that they know they shouldn’t do, but it seems particularly more so at” self-checkout kiosks.

Howland, of Retail Dive, said between the shoplifting they seem to be facilitating and the frustration they seem to be causing some honest people, self-checkout lanes will have to change. But she thinks the benefits — labor cost savings, for example, plus convenience for customers who do like them — are so compelling that they won’t disappear.

She said even with all the anti-theft technology stores are deploying at self-checkout lanes and throughout stores, there’s another fundamental reason the kiosks might be facilitating some theft, which isn’t specific to the kiosks themselves.

Kiosks enable stores to get by with fewer employees, and “it’s just always — my sources tell me — more conducive to shoplifting when when there just aren’t as many people working in a store,” Howland said.

Howland said it’s impossible to guess how much of retail price inflation in recent years might be attributable to theft — what stores have to spend on security, the cost of stolen items and so forth — but it’s almost certainly not as important a factor in inflation as other retail costs, such as employee salaries, which have risen and account for a far larger percentage of overall retail costs.

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