Shoplifting’s golden age
Britain’s shoplifting epidemic is being fuelled by a criminal justice system that rarely imposes meaningful punishment
DAVID SPENCER
When it comes to shoplifting, and indeed a whole host of other types of so-called “low-level” crime and disorder, we are living through perhaps the most permissive era on record. Over 500,000 shoplifting offences are recorded by the police every year — although the real volume of offences undoubtedly dwarfs this number by many multiples.
A relatively small number of criminals are responsible for this crimewave. It is estimated that around 10 per cent of shoplifters commit for 68 per cent of all thefts from retailers. New data published this week shows that the most prolific offenders each rack up an average of 105 offences.
Policy Exchange has for the last three years been tracking how the courts deal with the most prolific — so called hyper-prolific — offenders. What the results make clear is that, contrary to what we often hear, it is actually very difficult indeed to be sent to prison in this country. Even those with more than 75 previous convictions for an either-way or indictable offence — a classification of crimes which include burglary, GBH and drug supply – are sent to prison on only 46 per cent of occasions.
At the root of this failure is an adherence to the politically “progressivist” approach to crime, which for decades became embedded as the status quo across the main political parties in Westminster. This “progressivism” imagines that crime is principally the fault of “systemic” factors – such as poverty, a poor upbringing or even racism – rather than the individual criminal themselves.
Neither is it only politicians who pay homage to such “principles”. Many of the police chiefs, judges, prosecutors and civil servants who actually run our criminal justice system are adherents. Indeed, even many senior police officers, from the Commissioner of the Met on down, are dismissive of the applicability of tactics such as “Broken Windows” policing which could make a huge difference to this type of criminality. They are supported by a “prison-reform industrial complex” of organisations and individuals whose main objective seems to be to reduce the prison population to as close to zero as possible.
Perhaps this group’s greatest champion was the last Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson – he was on record saying that only a third of the criminals in prison should be there at all. Changes at the top of Government seem to offer little hope of a new approach. Under Prime Minister Andy Burnham two of the men who killed police officer PC Andrew Harper were stopped from being released early from prison only following an open letter from every chief constable, public statements by PC Harper’s devastated family and a petition signed by over a million people.
Neither should we make the error of imagining that this insidious “progressivism” is the sole preserve of the Left. In relation to shoplifting, one of the clearest examples of this “soft on crime” approach was the 2014 legislation from the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government which treated any shoplifting offence up to a value of £200 as a “summary-only” crime. Many perceived this as being tantamount to decriminalising such crimes entirely. The former Secretary of State for Justice Alex Chalk KC and former Chair of the Justice Select Committee Sir Bob Neill – both Conservative Members of Parliament until the 2024 general election – are on record as saying a version of: “we should only imprison those we are afraid of, not those we are annoyed or angry with”. Why? Why should the law-abiding majority be expected to tolerate those individuals who daily immiserate our lives through their criminality? Should the public really have to accept as the minimum threshold for a criminal to be sent to prison being only once they have struck fear into our hearts? Surely not.
One major retailer told me recently that one of the biggest problems their security guards face when stopping shoplifters is that the suspected criminal will often try to bite their way out of being detained. It is understandable that security guards may therefore be reticent to tackle these feral individuals given the risks are not merely a black eye or a bloody nose but a communicable disease.
Earlier this year I spent a day sat at the back of Thames Magistrates Court in East London. Several shoplifters were brought before the magistrates to be dealt with. Most pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one single day in custody as punishment. In actual fact, they had already served that one single day’s punishment because they had been held overnight in the local police station due to their already long list of previous convictions. As a result these offenders were immediately released from court onto the streets – presumably to continue their crime spree on their way home.
In their efforts to stop the criminals, retailers are forced to take steps which make everything worse for the ordinary shopper. Relatively inexpensive products are now placed behind lock and key. More stores are patrolled by security guards eyeing even the law-abiding with suspicion. Major retail chains are investing in facial recognition systems to provide the police with evidence of identified suspects’ crimes which can then be used to pursue prosecutions – but as effective as these technologies may be, they raise important questions of privacy for the rest of us.
Retailers already operate on very tight margins so the effect of shoplifting, and the defensive steps the industry must now take, is to drive up prices to consumers therefore contributing to the cost-of-living crisis.
Ultimately, the measures being taken will have only a limited effect unless there is a new political consensus when it comes to crime and justice – either that or the election of the first Government for three decades that is actually willing to take an unequivocally tough approach to criminals.
The permissive era on crime and justice has lasted long enough. The time has come to build many more prisons and then to fill them with both the prolific and so-called “low-level” criminals who make our lives a misery.
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(UKR)
