Shoplifting & Organized Retail Crime

Seventy-nine percent of criminal and juvenile justice professionals believe, based on their experience with offenders, that shoplifting is a "gateway" crime.

It's commonly understood that shoplifting can be a thrill-seeking behavior. It's like a little game you play with the store.

The NRSS indicates that shoplifting accounted for 35.7 percent of the reported shrink in 2017, which is down from 39.3 percent in 2016.

More than lecture, video, or online instruction and pen-and-pencil testing, situational exercises or scenario training provides supervisors with a picture of how ready an officer is to handle an event.

In one experiment, Barry Manilow music was broadcast through loudspeakers located in a local parking lot every night between 9 pm and midnight on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Organized retail crime methods are a part of the retail marketplace, and they operate under the same basic principles as retailers. There is an opportunity to make a profit by supplying a demand, so various ORC players take it upon themselves to become the suppliers.

In early 2017, a small group of retail loss prevention professionals and local law enforcement officers assembled in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) market to discuss organized retail crime (ORC).

Successful organized retail crime associations are typically independent, multi-jurisdictional, customer-centric, and a recognized non-profit to be best positioned to lead the public/private partnership and combat ORC.

It is clear that retailers can no longer rely solely on criminal justice to impose proven effective sanctions aimed at reducing repeat offenses for shoplifting offenders. [Sponsored]

Shoplifting is often viewed by professionals and amateur thieves as a low-risk versus high-reward business. As experts have documented, many shops and stores do not do enough to dissuade the rational criminal, who scans every environment for an opportunity.