Sister has started shoplifting

Talk to the shop.

Ask them to confront her and request that she stops stealing immediately or the Police will become involved.

The shop should be grateful to you and will help out.

Tell your sister that you expect her to stop and to make a donation to the shop and voice an apology for stealing.

The last thing she or her kids wants is a photo of her on the shop window or town facebook page with captian

• Does anyone know this thief?

Mental health is not an excuse to do what you feel like

But that's only going to work once, possibly twice in each shop. They'll quickly get wise to you if you continually make 'genuine mistakes', however well-dressed and well-spoken you might be.

Yes!

Also pretty normal to have a 'generally don't grass' rule. See all, hear all, say nowt!

Yes, and Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting.

People with bipolar disorder are susceptable as it's an impulsive thrill-seeking behaviour. If she can't stop it's an addictive behaviour. I'd discuss with her how she'd feel if her children/ their friends found out when they were older. It's the kind of thing a middle-class kid would be teased for (your mum's a klepto kinda thing). The thought of that long-term issue would be more off-putting than the embarrassment at a till for me.

My mum's well-off friend was once caught shop-lifting. The fall-out was awful, her job and marriage both were lost and her kids were so embarrassed. It was a small town and they were older kids. Her husband just felt he didn't know who she was. It was very sad. This was 25+ years ago. These days the family would be more likely to think about why it happened, mental health etc. I'd imagine. But it's still the sort of thing that could rock a family and make it hard to instill values in your kids as they get older.

Lol.‘it’s pretty normal to have a ‘don’t grass on your family’ rule!

Shoplifting is not unusual. If she’s caught and is a middle class mother saying oh gosh sorry I was sorting dc our, chances are, first time, they would let her out for stuff and no drama. I walked out of sainsburys the other day and the cashier had forgotten to take the tag off my leg of lamb, I did not take receipt and the security guard was like ‘whatever, no problem if you say you paid you paid’. So 🤷‍♀️

Encourage her to seek some help from her GP. I remember years ago the TV chef Anthony Worral Thompson was caught shoplifting and spoke quite openly about why he did it. It sounds like your sister may be doing the same and seeking some excitement.

A few months ago I saw a woman push a big block of cheese in her child's buggy under a blanket. I just thought she must be really desperate to do that. She saw I'd seen her and hurried away.

Yes, I expect this is the course of action they'll most likely take: once they know you're a thief, they'll have your photo or identifying details up at the security point next to the entrance - then simply stop you from entering in the first place.

A shop isn't a public place in the fullest sense of being somewhere that everybody has a right to be. They exist to make money, hence they want as many actual honest shoppers to come in freely; but if they see a person whom they know will represent a loss to their profits, they are perfectly at liberty to deny them entry.

Even if you're not ever prosecuted, unless you specifically travel away from home to do your shoplifting, I imagine it must be extremely limiting if there's an ever-growing list of local shops that you are barred from entering. What if your friend asks if you can pop in with them or urges you to buy something from there that's on a great offer and they know you use frequently?

Maybe if you socialise as part of a criminal underclass, you'd just shrug and say "I'm banned from there for nicking stuff", but if you have any self-respect (or at least would like friends, family and associates to think that you have), it must surely be phenomenally embarrassing to have to admit that you're not allowed in your area's main/only supermarket.

Ah, right - thanks for clarifying.

Police don't care about theft under £200 and shop workers aren't allowed to chase after thieves to retrieve stolen items in case they're assaulted so really there's little anyone can do except try to ban her from the store.

Not that it excuses her behaviour of course. Deplorable.

I think the self scan tills have led to a lot more shoplifting from people who would never have dreamed of doing it before.

@BlueGrey1 You have no idea about my empathy levels
Yes of course people may have no other choice but to commit crime, but that is for the court to decide based on circumstances.
Clearly the OP knows her sister is a criminal, and that does not need to shoplift out of necessity. In fact, she has said she is now doing it for thrills
Some people murder 'for thrills'
Should we all be empathetic towards them and not bother reporting?

I watched a tv programme about this on Wed evening. The store detectives (in the shop that the programme was partly recorded in) don't call the police or take it any further if the value of the stolen items is less than 200 pounds. They followed another man and woman who put some items in a bag and other items through the check out. When security approached them they said it was a genuine mistake. It was very clearly not a genuine mistake. Security said that as the items were low value, they couldn't do anything about it other than tell the customers they were being watched.

Yes I had 4 tins of beans and she scanned 5 etc.

I agree that it's good she's told you as it must have been difficult for her to do so.

I'd encourage her to get counselling to try to get to the root of what's going on here. It sounds like there's an element of compulsive behaviour in that she doesn't want to do it but can't rein herself back.

She really needs to though because if she's doing this habitually there is a good chance that she's been spotted and they're just waiting for the total amount of stolen goods to reach a figure worth prosecuting. I would point this out to her and say she's very very lucky that she's not been challenged so far but one day, she will be, and she won't get notice of when that is so she needs to stop now.

She can use strategies to help herself until the counselling has an effect. Obviously stop going round supermarkets if at all possible - use delivery or click and collect. Distraction is good too - try to really focus on her son while she's in a shop and concentrate on what's going on with him rather than looking for things that are easy to steal.

It might help her to mentally play forward how it will go if she is escorted to the back - both the long term and short term events that will happen. Really connect that in her head with what she's been doing. Then when she's next in a shop and feeling the urge do something to bring her focus onto this play-forward work - tapping herself on her wrist or something that physically diverts her away from this drive that she's developed.

I hope she manages to crack it. You must be a lovely sister that she feels able to discuss this with you.

It came up as I hadn't scanned it so had to have my whole shop rescanned. This revealed that I had missed 3 things (I hadn't the rescan lady scanned more of the things than I had).

Eh? How had you not missed anything if she scanned items in your trolley that you hadn't scanned? Do you mean that she scanned some items twice?

I once scanned something wrong (scanned a pink bleach but changed by mind and swapped for yellow, they have different bar codes) doing self scan and I happened to have a rescan. It came up as I hadn't scanned it so had to have my whole shop rescanned. This revealed that I had missed 3 things (I hadn't the rescan lady scanned more of the things than I had).

Anyway it looked like I had tried to walk out without paying for 3 things and she was so unbothered I was shocked. I guess they see it all the time but I was mortified, I couldn't steal I'm too honest.

No, it could be a mental health issue or it could just be common or garden criminality.

If it's the former, I hope she gets help. If it's the latter, I hope she gets caught.

When I worked in a large Tesco a few years ago. I worked on the meat counter.
Security guard came over and asked what one of my customers had had off me. I told him, he said he would talk to us later.

He came back to us later and told us she was banned from the shop but they had pressed charges as they had been filming her for weeks. She had been stealing the expensive things like meat and face cream.
He told us they like to record them for a few weeks so they can’t use the I just forgot routine. If she isn’t totally skint and can’t feed her kids she is just a common thief and will be treated like one.

This is bollocks! Police won't even be called unless it's over £200 worth of goods where I'm from!

She says she has to stop but that it’s saving her money and things have been tougher financially.

Maybe it's just semantics, and others will probably disagree with me; but I object to her use of the term 'saving money'.

To me, saving money means getting a great bargain deal, being given something, finding a cheaper just-as-good alternative or deeming it unnecessary and simply doing without it.

Theft is not 'saving money'; it is stealing it.

@jemenfous37

If I saw a down on their luck type of person shoplifting food / essentials I wouldn’t report them either.
Some people have very difficult lives and sometimes have to resort to this kind of behaviour, I don’t think you have much empathy