5 ms·

We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters, so companies are increasingly relying on odious technology to handle

We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters, so companies are increasingly relying on odious technology to handle the problem themselves, which is in turn denied. The result is we're going to all get punished for it. Increasingly we're going to see a return policy that is less and less flexible until one day it is eliminated altogether.

j_w 1y ago
I'm not sure that I would agree with the claim that the state is unable to stop shoplifters. The case here was Australia, but speaking to the United States: You can't really do anything about shoplifting until after it happens. It's not a crime until it's been committed, then you can prosecute. The issue is there is a base level cost to do so, and it's going to take a very large amount of shoplifting to balance that. We as a society have basically accepted that certain crimes don't go punished, and it seems like low value shoplifting largely fits that category. In turn, large companies have decided that they will instead collect data on their own until they have enough to make it a high value issue, with proof. Then the state will prosecute. The issue here is that companies do not get to illegally collect data, they still would have to do so within the bounds of the law. So what are those bounds? We say the Government can surveil us with impunity, but only for terrorism or whatever else gets brought under that umbrella. For "petty" crimes the government would need permission to collect the amount of data that these companies are and then build their case with that. This isn't to say that shoplifting is okay, just that society doesn't seem to care all that much. Our reaction to companies taking actions like these will also show how much we seem to care about them as well. Spoiler on that last one: we don't seem to care (in the US).
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too. That's what Trump/MAGA america wants. They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. They will gleeful cheer it on.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    >We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too. That's already the law in a huge part of the country. > They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. Places like Qt (gas station chain) in AZ have armed guys that are trained to shoot if lawful (armed robbery, etc).
  - dmitrygr 1y ago
    I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you implying that shoplifting should not be punished? Wouldn’t lack of enforcement or punishment for wrongdoing only lead to more wrongdoing? Isn’t the well-accepted viewpoint on this website that if the cost of violating a law is lower than the profit, that is what companies will do. What makes you think people won’t make the same calculation? The way to solve this problem is to make the cost significantly higher than the benefit. Suggested reading: Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs. Of any person who has ever run any country, he solved this problem in the most effective way.
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      I've spent a lot of time in Singapore. Not a nation that should be emulated.
      - s1artibartfast 1y ago
        Why?
        mothballed 1y ago
        A couple that some people might not like 1) Execution for drug trafficking without violence 2) A slight majority of the populace eligible for public housing gets it via essentially a regressive tax system where a gigantic slice of the populace (immigrants) fund the housing they can't use, creating a very bizarre government-imposed scenario where housing actually becomes radically cheaper the better positioned you are to be wealthy. Of course there are arguments for both.
- mothballed 1y ago
  It definitely depends on the state and store policy. A Walmart in AZ has sent gigantic bouncers after me to detain me on suspicion of shoplifting a $5 bag of cat litter. In my state they are allowed to kidnap/imprison you until police arrive if they have 'reasonable suspicion' you're in the act of shoplifting, so yeah have fun guessing whether the guy with the walmart badge is actually security or just a rapist.
  - firefax 1y ago
    OTOH there are four critera for a legal stop -- they need to see you enter without the merchandise, select it from the shelf, conceal it, then walk past the point of sale AND all merchandise. And you have to have an unobstructed view of the person, because if they discard the item you stop them for, you're in for a world of (legal) hurt. Also many stores have shot themselves in the foot by placing items for sale outside the front doors... thus a shoplifter could claim they just stuck something in their pocket because they forgot they needed a pumpkin and thus needed a cart, or something to that effect. If you stop someone and can't document these four points, they can challenge the stop, and you're up for a LOT more losses from the unlawful detainment suit. So basically, they value upselling people at entrances more than limiting liability, and a savvy shoplifter can sue for a lot of money if the store allows reusable bags, since that removes the ability to charge for "concealment" given that by selling Safeway or whatever branded opaque bags, you have implicitly consented to "concealment" of merchandise.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Depends on the state. AZ: >C. A merchant, or a merchant's agent or employee, with reasonable cause, may detain on the premises in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time any person who is suspected of shoplifting as prescribed in subsection A of this section for questioning or summoning a law enforcement officer. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01805.htm https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01805.htm i.e. all they need is reasonable cause to suspect you are shoplifting. When I was detained no one ever saw me steal anything, I openly grabbed the cat litter, scanned it at the machine, paid for it, grabbed the receipt, then refused to show it to the receipt-checker (not about to slow down for that bullshit since it is now my property) so they just sent some dudes out to grab the cart out of my hands.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end. First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible. The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders. However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door. And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to. And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money. So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    > and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it. I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt
aerostable_slug 1y ago
And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membership & entry. Memberships also give retailers a way to kick miscreants out of an entire chain (vs. trespassing them from one location) and keep them out without risking a lawsuit for profiling or other verboten activities. If I opened a store in San Francisco tomorrow it would be some kind of membership only deal, maybe a co-op to appeal to local politics. No way would I allow the general public inside unless I were selling bulk concrete or something else equally impossible to shoplift.
- nutjob2 1y ago
  In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.
  - emchammer 1y ago
    Welcome to iCostco, I love you
  - sbuttgereit 1y ago
    Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer? The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan. With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?
    - mothballed 1y ago
      I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?
crooked-v 1y ago
> The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters National larceny rates in at least the US (but I'm fairly sure most Western countries) have consistently gone down for decades. There's significantly less shoplifting now on average than there was in the '80s or '90s.
- buckle8017 1y ago
  How could you possibly know that. Retailers have no reason to report crime they do not expect to be investigated or prosecuted. Don't say insurance because nobody is reporting shoplifting to their insurance.
  - jonbiggums22 1y ago
    Wouldn't insurance rates go up if they reported all of the shoplifting? I suspect most large company's do some sort of self insurance setup though.
    - buckle8017 1y ago
      There's really no insurance for retail shoplifting. Big retailers just bake crime into the cost of goods sold.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    As part of lobbying for changes to laws, or for more police funding - stores accurately track "shrinkage", why are you so certain it's not being reported?
  - ruszki 1y ago
    The falling shrinkage is a good indicator, although it’s imperfect for obvious reasons. Of course, there are anomalies like COVID, but otherwise the trend is clear. Also when some entity like supermarket chains or their advocacy groups tried to split up shrinkage by its causes in the past decades, even the shoplifting part fell. So there is no better statistics, and that tells that shoplifting is probably falling. Of course, you cannot know, but statistics is quite clear that shoplifting decrease is way more probable than increase, and you need some other reasons to advocate for increasing shoplifting. So when somebody does that, it’s highly probable that not because shoplifting is actually increasing.
dmitrygr 1y ago
Many states are [edit: almost] completely able to stop shoplifters. If yours is not, think long and hard about your choices at the next election. Edit: I do love the down votes. It kind of proves the point. People want to complain, but don’t want to do anything about it or hold themselves responsible for the fact that they are the ones who chose the situation they are in. Literally. At the ballot box.
- wat10000 1y ago
  What state has a zero shoplifting rate? You're being downvoted because you made a politically motivated statement that's very clearly untrue.
  - dmitrygr 1y ago
    If the statement that actually enforcing law will lower crime is politically motivated, then I’m afraid to ask what statement isn’t. Is it OK to state that 2+2 = 4, or does that have political undertones too?
    - freedomben 1y ago
      Note that you didn't answer the question about which state has zero shoplifting. > Many states are completely able to stop shoplifters. In your defense, you didn't claim zero explicitly (but did heavily imply it), but you also ignored the question
      - dmitrygr 1y ago
        No state has zero, many have very much less than others and do not see need to close stored due to loss or lock up basics behind plastic doors. Living in a few states in close succession really shows it off. Living in CA desensitizes you to it, until you go somewhere else and realize just how much desensitized to it you've become.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      You didn't say that "actually enforcing law will lower crime." You said "Many states are completely able to stop shoplifters." And then you tied it to voting. The initial statement is bullshit and the tie to voting makes it politically-motivated bullshit.
brightball 1y ago
I always wondered about framing this as a sort of self-defense position. When I was working on a site a decade ago where people were constantly defrauding the users we built a lot of tools to creatively deal with these people to make them less effective. It became very clear that law enforcement wasn't prepared to deal with the problem (at the time at least, maybe they've gotten better) so we had to figure out anything that we could do to protect our users. The fact that you're essentially only allowed to play defense is IMO the reason it keeps happening. If we were able to hire a cybersecuurity company to hack the people defrauding our users for us, we would have done it in a heartbeat and it would have been worth every penny. It always seemed like, in the US at least, this could have fallen under the 2nd amendment as a self defense response.
- JohnMakin 1y ago
  The issue, of course, with collecting biometric data to stop a problem like this is you are also collecting data from people who haven't done anything wrong at all. One false positive "anomaly" in the system, or a data breach, exposes innocent people to risk they were not informed about.
Hilift 1y ago
Unfortunately the state will never be able to stop or prevent it. There needs to be arrests and prosecutions though, and that is where the problems start. For a interesting example, look at California. A few years back, the state reverted medium-serious crimes back to the county for detainment. This moved the cost of incarceration back to the source, however, those inmates cannot be released. So if there is an overcrowding/capacity concern, the low-level offenses such as retail theft are often immediately released even if they are a repeat habitual recidivist offender with no disincentive to offend again. For a vision of the future, look at YouTube videos of walking tours of San Francisco and Oakland. Entire streets for lease, 38% commercial availability rate. The Crocker Mall and San Francisco Centre Mall are empty, the latter for sale, losing over $1 billion in value. Probably doesn't matter though, because most people ditched shopping and do everything online now. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/auction-san-francisco-centre-mall-faced-with-another-delay/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/auction-san-franci... SF Centre Mall tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3JXQoM9AU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3JXQoM9AU SF Crocker Galleria tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuSQSA3brA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuSQSA3brA
- dsr_ 1y ago
  If only there were some way to substantially reduce the incentive for theft of consumer goods. What could motivate people to theft? They must need something awfully badly. Perhaps fixing the underlying requirements could help.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago
    You're saying it in sort of a condescending way, but there's still truth. Desperation leads to crime, true. But also true: a lack of societal norms leads to crime. Any time we advocate or demonstrate disrespect, cheating, injustice, cruelty, unwarranted rule-breaking, doxing, or any kind of mob mentality we are contributing to it. And yes your favorite political villains are all guilty of this, but we need to start with ourselves and the people close to us.
eitau_1 1y ago
When personal responsibility fails to be exercised, personal liberty suffers.
p_j_w 1y ago
Your crisis doesn't exist, at least not in the US: https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191247/reported-larceny-theft-rate-in-the-us-since-1990.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191247/reported-larceny-t...
- _9ptr 1y ago
  Is it only California?
- jdasdf 1y ago
  I can reduce reported crime rates by simply not doing anything about the crime that is reported for extended periods of time. People understand that reporting does nothing and so they stop bothering to do it.
  - bachmeier 1y ago
    Two points: You can explain away any data with an argument like that. If you don't have evidence, then there's no evidence of out of control crime.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Except stores have continued to report shrink, not crime stats, this whole time. That reported number did not go up, which was bad for the narrative they want to push, so the National Retail Federation, the largest lobbying organization for retail who publishes shrink stats for decades has suddenly stopped publishing that stat.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
PieTime 1y ago
We’re living in a time of income inequality and this is the natural result.
mrguyorama 1y ago
>We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters This is still an utter bullshit narrative. Not only does "the state" not even try to go after coordinated shoplifting rings, but shoplifting has not statistically increased Shrink has not increased. The National Retail Federation, the lobbying org publishing industry wide shrink statistics suddenly declined to publish the numbers this year, while instead pushing forward a survey of their members that say they all feel shoplifting is worse. Why do you think they would suppress that data unless it doesn't align with the narrative they are selling?
standardly 1y ago
Can you give one hypothetical example as to how a state might "stop" shoplifters? edit: thought crime police?
stubish 1y ago
Modern shops are designed to encourage purchasing. And security discourages purchasing. So just enough is done to keep shoplifting below a manageable level while maximizing profits. The use of invasive systems here is an attempt to increase security without discouraging purchasing, because it is invisible. Thankfully this one got caught by the watchdogs.

j_w 1y ago

I'm not sure that I would agree with the claim that the state is unable to stop shoplifters. The case here was Australia, but speaking to the United States: You can't really do anything about shoplifting until after it happens. It's not a crime until it's been committed, then you can prosecute. The issue is there is a base level cost to do so, and it's going to take a very large amount of shoplifting to balance that. We as a society have basically accepted that certain crimes don't go punished, and it seems like low value shoplifting largely fits that category. In turn, large companies have decided that they will instead collect data on their own until they have enough to make it a high value issue, with proof. Then the state will prosecute. The issue here is that companies do not get to illegally collect data, they still would have to do so within the bounds of the law. So what are those bounds? We say the Government can surveil us with impunity, but only for terrorism or whatever else gets brought under that umbrella. For "petty" crimes the government would need permission to collect the amount of data that these companies are and then build their case with that. This isn't to say that shoplifting is okay, just that society doesn't seem to care all that much. Our reaction to companies taking actions like these will also show how much we seem to care about them as well. Spoiler on that last one: we don't seem to care (in the US).

Der_Einzige 1y ago
We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too. That's what Trump/MAGA america wants. They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. They will gleeful cheer it on.
- mothballed 1y ago
  >We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too. That's already the law in a huge part of the country. > They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. Places like Qt (gas station chain) in AZ have armed guys that are trained to shoot if lawful (armed robbery, etc).
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you implying that shoplifting should not be punished? Wouldn’t lack of enforcement or punishment for wrongdoing only lead to more wrongdoing? Isn’t the well-accepted viewpoint on this website that if the cost of violating a law is lower than the profit, that is what companies will do. What makes you think people won’t make the same calculation? The way to solve this problem is to make the cost significantly higher than the benefit. Suggested reading: Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs. Of any person who has ever run any country, he solved this problem in the most effective way.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    I've spent a lot of time in Singapore. Not a nation that should be emulated.
    - s1artibartfast 1y ago
      Why?
      - mothballed 1y ago
        A couple that some people might not like 1) Execution for drug trafficking without violence 2) A slight majority of the populace eligible for public housing gets it via essentially a regressive tax system where a gigantic slice of the populace (immigrants) fund the housing they can't use, creating a very bizarre government-imposed scenario where housing actually becomes radically cheaper the better positioned you are to be wealthy. Of course there are arguments for both.
mothballed 1y ago
It definitely depends on the state and store policy. A Walmart in AZ has sent gigantic bouncers after me to detain me on suspicion of shoplifting a $5 bag of cat litter. In my state they are allowed to kidnap/imprison you until police arrive if they have 'reasonable suspicion' you're in the act of shoplifting, so yeah have fun guessing whether the guy with the walmart badge is actually security or just a rapist.
- firefax 1y ago
  OTOH there are four critera for a legal stop -- they need to see you enter without the merchandise, select it from the shelf, conceal it, then walk past the point of sale AND all merchandise. And you have to have an unobstructed view of the person, because if they discard the item you stop them for, you're in for a world of (legal) hurt. Also many stores have shot themselves in the foot by placing items for sale outside the front doors... thus a shoplifter could claim they just stuck something in their pocket because they forgot they needed a pumpkin and thus needed a cart, or something to that effect. If you stop someone and can't document these four points, they can challenge the stop, and you're up for a LOT more losses from the unlawful detainment suit. So basically, they value upselling people at entrances more than limiting liability, and a savvy shoplifter can sue for a lot of money if the store allows reusable bags, since that removes the ability to charge for "concealment" given that by selling Safeway or whatever branded opaque bags, you have implicitly consented to "concealment" of merchandise.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Depends on the state. AZ: >C. A merchant, or a merchant's agent or employee, with reasonable cause, may detain on the premises in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time any person who is suspected of shoplifting as prescribed in subsection A of this section for questioning or summoning a law enforcement officer. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01805.htm https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01805.htm i.e. all they need is reasonable cause to suspect you are shoplifting. When I was detained no one ever saw me steal anything, I openly grabbed the cat litter, scanned it at the machine, paid for it, grabbed the receipt, then refused to show it to the receipt-checker (not about to slow down for that bullshit since it is now my property) so they just sent some dudes out to grab the cart out of my hands.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end. First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible. The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders. However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door. And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to. And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money. So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  > and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it. I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt

aerostable_slug 1y ago

And a rise in membership-only retailers, like Costco. These retailers can make the use of biometrics and other shrink-prevention mechanisms a condition of membership & entry. Memberships also give retailers a way to kick miscreants out of an entire chain (vs. trespassing them from one location) and keep them out without risking a lawsuit for profiling or other verboten activities. If I opened a store in San Francisco tomorrow it would be some kind of membership only deal, maybe a co-op to appeal to local politics. No way would I allow the general public inside unless I were selling bulk concrete or something else equally impossible to shoplift.

nutjob2 1y ago
In what sense are you keeping the general public out? Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters. What makes more sense is store sized vending machines. Pay for what you want and it is dispensed. Order on site or online. I'm surprised no one is doing this on a wide scale yet.
- emchammer 1y ago
  Welcome to iCostco, I love you
- sbuttgereit 1y ago
  Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer? The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan. With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?
  - mothballed 1y ago
    I guess it's up for interpretation whether stealing from an Amazon van is easier or harder than stealing from a store. Is it more risky for the thief to bring the Amazon van to the hood, or the hood to the store?

crooked-v 1y ago

> The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters National larceny rates in at least the US (but I'm fairly sure most Western countries) have consistently gone down for decades. There's significantly less shoplifting now on average than there was in the '80s or '90s.

buckle8017 1y ago
How could you possibly know that. Retailers have no reason to report crime they do not expect to be investigated or prosecuted. Don't say insurance because nobody is reporting shoplifting to their insurance.
- jonbiggums22 1y ago
  Wouldn't insurance rates go up if they reported all of the shoplifting? I suspect most large company's do some sort of self insurance setup though.
  - buckle8017 1y ago
    There's really no insurance for retail shoplifting. Big retailers just bake crime into the cost of goods sold.
- philjohn 1y ago
  As part of lobbying for changes to laws, or for more police funding - stores accurately track "shrinkage", why are you so certain it's not being reported?
- ruszki 1y ago
  The falling shrinkage is a good indicator, although it’s imperfect for obvious reasons. Of course, there are anomalies like COVID, but otherwise the trend is clear. Also when some entity like supermarket chains or their advocacy groups tried to split up shrinkage by its causes in the past decades, even the shoplifting part fell. So there is no better statistics, and that tells that shoplifting is probably falling. Of course, you cannot know, but statistics is quite clear that shoplifting decrease is way more probable than increase, and you need some other reasons to advocate for increasing shoplifting. So when somebody does that, it’s highly probable that not because shoplifting is actually increasing.

dmitrygr 1y ago

Many states are [edit: almost] completely able to stop shoplifters. If yours is not, think long and hard about your choices at the next election. Edit: I do love the down votes. It kind of proves the point. People want to complain, but don’t want to do anything about it or hold themselves responsible for the fact that they are the ones who chose the situation they are in. Literally. At the ballot box.

wat10000 1y ago
What state has a zero shoplifting rate? You're being downvoted because you made a politically motivated statement that's very clearly untrue.
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  If the statement that actually enforcing law will lower crime is politically motivated, then I’m afraid to ask what statement isn’t. Is it OK to state that 2+2 = 4, or does that have political undertones too?
  - freedomben 1y ago
    Note that you didn't answer the question about which state has zero shoplifting. > Many states are completely able to stop shoplifters. In your defense, you didn't claim zero explicitly (but did heavily imply it), but you also ignored the question
    - dmitrygr 1y ago
      No state has zero, many have very much less than others and do not see need to close stored due to loss or lock up basics behind plastic doors. Living in a few states in close succession really shows it off. Living in CA desensitizes you to it, until you go somewhere else and realize just how much desensitized to it you've become.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    You didn't say that "actually enforcing law will lower crime." You said "Many states are completely able to stop shoplifters." And then you tied it to voting. The initial statement is bullshit and the tie to voting makes it politically-motivated bullshit.

brightball 1y ago

I always wondered about framing this as a sort of self-defense position. When I was working on a site a decade ago where people were constantly defrauding the users we built a lot of tools to creatively deal with these people to make them less effective. It became very clear that law enforcement wasn't prepared to deal with the problem (at the time at least, maybe they've gotten better) so we had to figure out anything that we could do to protect our users. The fact that you're essentially only allowed to play defense is IMO the reason it keeps happening. If we were able to hire a cybersecuurity company to hack the people defrauding our users for us, we would have done it in a heartbeat and it would have been worth every penny. It always seemed like, in the US at least, this could have fallen under the 2nd amendment as a self defense response.

JohnMakin 1y ago
The issue, of course, with collecting biometric data to stop a problem like this is you are also collecting data from people who haven't done anything wrong at all. One false positive "anomaly" in the system, or a data breach, exposes innocent people to risk they were not informed about.

Hilift 1y ago

Unfortunately the state will never be able to stop or prevent it. There needs to be arrests and prosecutions though, and that is where the problems start. For a interesting example, look at California. A few years back, the state reverted medium-serious crimes back to the county for detainment. This moved the cost of incarceration back to the source, however, those inmates cannot be released. So if there is an overcrowding/capacity concern, the low-level offenses such as retail theft are often immediately released even if they are a repeat habitual recidivist offender with no disincentive to offend again. For a vision of the future, look at YouTube videos of walking tours of San Francisco and Oakland. Entire streets for lease, 38% commercial availability rate. The Crocker Mall and San Francisco Centre Mall are empty, the latter for sale, losing over $1 billion in value. Probably doesn't matter though, because most people ditched shopping and do everything online now. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/auction-san-francisco-centre-mall-faced-with-another-delay/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/auction-san-franci... SF Centre Mall tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3JXQoM9AU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN3JXQoM9AU SF Crocker Galleria tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuSQSA3brA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuSQSA3brA

dsr_ 1y ago
If only there were some way to substantially reduce the incentive for theft of consumer goods. What could motivate people to theft? They must need something awfully badly. Perhaps fixing the underlying requirements could help.
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- MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago
  You're saying it in sort of a condescending way, but there's still truth. Desperation leads to crime, true. But also true: a lack of societal norms leads to crime. Any time we advocate or demonstrate disrespect, cheating, injustice, cruelty, unwarranted rule-breaking, doxing, or any kind of mob mentality we are contributing to it. And yes your favorite political villains are all guilty of this, but we need to start with ourselves and the people close to us.

eitau_1 1y ago

When personal responsibility fails to be exercised, personal liberty suffers.

p_j_w 1y ago

Your crisis doesn't exist, at least not in the US: https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191247/reported-larceny-theft-rate-in-the-us-since-1990.jpg https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191247/reported-larceny-t...

_9ptr 1y ago
Is it only California?
jdasdf 1y ago
I can reduce reported crime rates by simply not doing anything about the crime that is reported for extended periods of time. People understand that reporting does nothing and so they stop bothering to do it.
- bachmeier 1y ago
  Two points: You can explain away any data with an argument like that. If you don't have evidence, then there's no evidence of out of control crime.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  Except stores have continued to report shrink, not crime stats, this whole time. That reported number did not go up, which was bad for the narrative they want to push, so the National Retail Federation, the largest lobbying organization for retail who publishes shrink stats for decades has suddenly stopped publishing that stat.

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PieTime 1y ago

We’re living in a time of income inequality and this is the natural result.

mrguyorama 1y ago

>We're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters This is still an utter bullshit narrative. Not only does "the state" not even try to go after coordinated shoplifting rings, but shoplifting has not statistically increased Shrink has not increased. The National Retail Federation, the lobbying org publishing industry wide shrink statistics suddenly declined to publish the numbers this year, while instead pushing forward a survey of their members that say they all feel shoplifting is worse. Why do you think they would suppress that data unless it doesn't align with the narrative they are selling?

standardly 1y ago

Can you give one hypothetical example as to how a state might "stop" shoplifters? edit: thought crime police?

stubish 1y ago

Modern shops are designed to encourage purchasing. And security discourages purchasing. So just enough is done to keep shoplifting below a manageable level while maximizing profits. The use of invasive systems here is an attempt to increase security without discouraging purchasing, because it is invisible. Thankfully this one got caught by the watchdogs.