The Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) supports retailer chains in two very distinct ways: By developing and improving asset protection strategy and processes as well as developing and improving asset protection techniques and technologies.
Crime and loss control strategies tend to work best when deploying evidence-based efforts to influence offender decisions. The three primary ways this works is to:
- Increase effort: Make it appear very difficult to successfully commit a crime;
- Increase risk: Make it appear highly probable the offender will be detected and sanctioned;
- Decrease potential benefit or reward: Make it appear the crime will not be worth the time, effort, and potential consequences.
See, Get, Fear
A major aspect of influencing offender decisions is accomplished through situational awareness. Situational Awareness is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the meaning of critical elements of information with respect to what is happening around us with regards to our mission. More simply stated, it’s knowing and understanding what is going on around us at any particular time.
- We must help offenders’ notice or know about our efforts (see);
- We must help offenders’ understand how our efforts will disrupt or document their actions (get);
- We must make our efforts appear very credible to offenders (fear).
The LPRC’s Zones of Influence vision further emphasizes how we establish sensors in, as well as deliver, efforts in concentric zones.
These Zones of Influence have been identified as:
Zone 1: Specific points or assets
Zone 2: Specific interior category areas
Zone 3: Store entry and overall interior
Zone 4: Parking lot entry and interior
Zone 5: Cyber and surrounding build/social communities
Through this concentric zone model, the LPRC research and development vision articulates that retailers require more and better: Situational awareness (diagnoses) and a tightly focused intervention (treatment) housed within these zones to more effectively deter and mitigate crime and loss threats and events.
