How many shoplifters are caught per day in an average UK supermarket?

[Dappy777]

I saw someone caught today in my local Sainsbury's, and I saw someone caught in the same store last week. I know shoplifting is now an epidemic. Just wondered how many are caught per day in an average store (my local Sainsbury's is massive).

When your purchases and movements are being monitored and prevented you might not be so happy.

Caught? A few

Prosecuted? Very few

Sadly I see it day in, day out at work. One of the most prolific ones (who over a 2 week period was logged as stealing £800 of goods) WAS arrested, but within 48 hours was released and back to his old ways. So the limit I think is £250, but due to how overwhelmed the courts and prisons are we were told that was temporarily increased to.... £1000. So because this guy hadn't reached £1k....he was released without charge. 🙃🫠

Genuinely at the point now that I see very little point in acting on seeing them (not that I can do much apart from press a button or log it on a tablet to no avail) . No less because recently in the past few months I've experienced intimidation and being followed by said regulars and no longer feel safe. So I don't see the point of putting a target on myself when the police/courts/my employer do sweet f.a to sort it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Or the entirety of stock of red bull or hot food from Greggs... 🤔🙄

(Though apparently the conversion rate of crack to red bull is one I was unaware of)

Catch them? Very rarely. See them? Daily. Usually several times a day. It’s mostly the same crowd day in, day out. We can’t do anything, we’re not allowed to. At most these days insults are hurled back and forth- it’s hard to keep your temper when you’re getting rinsed daily by these cunts. It has got physical before though. Threatened with broken bottles, dirty needles, rape. Oh and a samurai sword (he didn’t have it on his person, he said he was gonna come back with it). Some of my colleagues have been hit, shoved, spat at, grabbed by the throat.

All for minimum wage 🙃

They are shopping to order. The stuff stolen is exchanged for money for drugs
and drink. It’s re sold at some shops or at car boot sales etc. Shop lifting has become part of huge organised crime. If you are interested there are some interesting you tube videos from the police etc tracing the stolen goods to small shops and boot sales.

Increasingly facial identification will be used to recognise culprits. I think that the figure will be to stop the culprits actually entering the shop in the first place.

There is no automatic right to enter a shop and you do so on licence.That permission if revoked means that you become a trespasser and any theft technically becomes burglary which carries a higher prison sentence.So for those banned from shops who reoffend they need to use the tougher sentence of burglary.

Also,I think that they will eventually only allow entry to shops with a scanned credit or bank card and those who have been detected stealing beforehand will not be given entry. Larger stores will work together and have the data on serial thieves who will be banned from all their shops collectively. I suspect that this will be the future especially with AI and accurate facial recognition. People will be required to show their face with an ID card.

Shoplifting has morphed from someone stealing for themselves to huge shopflit to order eg a shelf of electric tooth brushes or a fridge unit of beef. It’s now big business and done “professionals’ with little shops onward selling the goods. Watching the various documentaries and met videos was eye opening. One journalist pretended to be a shop lifter and met an onward seller who was giving orders eg about what power tools to steal.

I work in retail and I’m sick to the back teeth of it.

We have people come in, fill the inside of their coats with steaks, zip up their coats and run.

We have parents who send their kids in with trolleys to fill with steaks and booze who then just walk out - they know that because it’s kids doing it not them that no one will touch them.

Future innovations may include:

• Biometric authentication for checkout and exit.
• Facial recognition tied to loyalty cards or payment.
• Smart trolleys that validate items in real time.

Couldn’t care less- the prices supermarkets charge, the lack of staff due to self service tills, taking out jobs for women, mothers, low class mainly!

I think it’s simple and the future I’ll be that to enter a shop you use a biometric card and pay a deposit of £10 to enter off set at checkout. Increasingly shopping is a leisure past time so to enter large shopping malls you might be charged £1 or 2 fro the experience. That way the stores have captured your id, biometrics and bank account and can use AI to follow you through the shops,

Also I think that the Gov need to put a delivery tax on goods delivered which is twice the rate if the seller has no retail store in a 30 mile proximity to suoort shoos to remain open. The delivery tax could be 5% of the value of the goods delivered and the money could be used to reduce business rates to keep the high street alive.

This is nit linked to shop lifting except the advantage of no shop expenses includes no shop lifting ( but obviously some warehouse theft).

It's far more frequent than people realise, where I used to work we would find multiple removed security tags and sometimes labels where they'd been switched.
Empty boxes, hangers and the odd worn pair of shoes were found too.
Stuff gets concealed in other shops shopping bags as there are multiple shops nearby and a totally plausible reason to have them.
Alarms went off all the time but you can't search people so they are free to take whatever.
I hate that people feel it's ok to do this, a big part of costs rising in shops is theft and something needs to be done!

Recently saw someone walk out of Tesco express with six boxes of Ferrero Rocher all stacked up together. Told the security guard I thought he might have stolen them and he said "yeah he steals stuff most weeks."
Eh??!

I’m currently incapacitated following foot surgery and I’ve been watching a lot of daytime tv, including the ‘catching shoplifters’ type programs. It’s got me wondering about the security personnel in shops/shopping centres - do they have actual powers of detention? They seem to apprehend people if they are sure they have taken things and detain them in a room until the police arrive. If someone declines to go with them, and continues to walk away, can they legally manhandle them and frogmarch them to a holding area?

I read that to detain a shoplifter you have to have followed and seen them at every one of these steps. Something like-
Enter the store
pick up the item
conceal the item
not pay for the item
exit the store

And if you haven’t seen every step then you can’t legally detain.

I wonder where the market is for all this stolen stuff. Yes there's the stealing a pair of hair straighteners or some earbuds and passing that on to Cash Converters or selling via FB marketplace claiming they're an unwanted gift level. But when people are nicking packs of lurpak, or steaks, or blocks of cheese - is that all being sold down the pub? You know 100% that is stolen, who is buying it. If no one did, there wouldn't be a market for the clearing the shelves of jars of coffee and packets of salmon level shoplifting.

I have often seen people at self-service tills pretend to swipe/scan something and then put it in their bag and walk out. I wonder what the security staff (or police) can do about that? Theoretically it isn’t stealing. The individual hasn’t hidden something in his coat or down his trousers. If the “unexpected item in bagging” area alarm doesn’t activate, then in a sense it’s the store’s responsibility. The culprit could do it day in and any out and then, if caught, say “well I didn’t know. I wasn’t concentrating and the alarm didn’t go off.” You can’t prove they’re lying. Most of us probably put things in our bag without it properly scanning and don’t even realise it.

Tesco Extra colleague here. We do. 1 on camera and 1 on door or in our foyer. Just stopped recently an attempt on 2 trollies of one household cleaning and the other meat. If they're stopped its logged but then they're let go. Banning takes time but no longer allowed to display their photos lol so down to thankfully regular guards noticing if uts agency then they slip through. But most staff are on the alert to pass on as quick as can any suspicious behaviour. Esp how a trolly is packed or if lingering too long in an aisle like alcohol or baby food with big bag for life's. Some even scan then dump handset. Staff are told not to approach. Stores like express with low crime rates lose their security till enough theft is recorded and cycle starts again.

I’m a personal shopper and see it every day sometimes twice a day!! In a Sainsbury’s too wonder if it’s the same one

It just amazes me that these people are known by the security staff and yet they keep going into the same store and doing it again! I have often wondered what the staff do when they catch someone. Do they look at the security cameras from the previous days and weeks to see if the person they’ve caught has done it before and then add up everything they’ve stolen? But then if the police aren’t interested I suppose they wouldn’t bother.

The ones who steal from my work place (convenience store) go across the road and sell their “stock” in the pub garden quite often. We can see them from the front window and the police have done fuck all about it. Baby formula is stolen to order I think. Not sure they’d sell that in the pub like they do with steak/cheese/persil etc.

And we all pay the price of it