UK’s Shoplifting Epidemic is Affecting Retailers Big & Small

shoplifting brings struggles for small retailers

UK’s Shoplifting Epidemic is Affecting Retailers Big & Small

Shoplifting in the UK has hit a record high.

Annual shoplifting offences in England and Wales went up 30% in 2024 to a record of almost 444,000 cases logged by police, and without doubt, this is just a small fraction of the true number. The British Retail Consortium’s 2024 crime survey estimated that shoplifting now costs UK retailers nearly £1.8 billion.

Paul Gerrard, the Co-op’s director of public affairs, described a state of “lawlessness on the UK high street that has never been seen before”. The Co-op alone recorded 330,000 incidents of shoplifting, abuse and violence in 2023. An increase of over 40% on the previous year.

So who’s stealing, and why?

The offenders mostly fall into 3 categories:

Firstly, the organised criminal gangs targeting luxury items to resell in bulk. It is seen as a low-risk, high-reward venture.

Second, repeat offenders who target the same store over-and-over, often on a commission for a ‘middle-man’ and often for mundane products such as coffee or laundry detergent says the Co-op’s director of public affairs.

Lastly are the opportunists said M&S chairman Archie Norman, he blames “the impatient middle classes, too entitled to suffer self-service technology” for the huge rise in shoplifting. More than 40% of 2,500 people answering a recent survey of UK shoppers admitted to having shoplifted, and self-service checkout issues identified as a key reason for their thefts.

What are retailers doing about it?

Booths supermarkets recently removed its self-checkouts, other chains have increased security measures by introducing dummy display packaging and body-worn cameras. Some are testing the use of AI and facial recognition technology to identify past shoplifters. But many of these potential fixes are beyond the financial scope of the small retailer.

What’s behind the sudden increase in shoplifting?

For some shoplifters, whether poor or affluent, it is claimed to be a form of protest in response to the large profits made by large businesses. Large retailers may be able to absorb some losses and factor in the costs of shoplifting into their pricing structure, but smaller shop owners are badly affected.

Some justify shoplifting because of the increase in the cost of living. A report for The Guardian documents the justifications of one anonymous shop-lifter after seeing his mortgage repayments double. “He doesn’t consider himself a prolific offender nor does he steal in bulk, but in order to feed himself and his two children, he supplements the weekly shop with things he doesn’t pay for”.

The reasons behind shoplifting are complex. Motivations are often a tangled mix of politics, economy, global conflict, gender, race, class and a sense of inequality.

Many shop owners place a heavy weight of blame on the lack of action taken by police, and therefore a lack of consequence for offenders. The Guardian reports that statistically, shoplifting is all but decriminalised in the UK: 70% of investigations into the 430,000+ reported incidents in 2023 were closed with no person identified. That means only around 129,000 of the estimated 16.7m incidents were brought to justice – less than 1%.

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