Labour promises to end “shameful neglect” of shoplifting
As shoplifting reaches record numbers, Labour describes it as “an epidemic in our society”. However, the majority of police forces did not issue a single penalty for shoplifting over the last year. So why are retail crime rates up and punishment down?
An analysis of official figures revealed that police officers have nearly entirely ceased punishing despite the number of shoplifting offences reaching record levels. This has made retailers fearful as they believe it encourages further criminal behaviour.
In the year to March 2024, 431 shoplifters were handed fixed penalty notices, the lowest form of punishment used for theft valued at under £100, according to The Times which analysed data published by The Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and police forces. Compared to a decade ago, this represents a 98% dip.
The number of shoplifting offences recorded by the police rose to 443,995 in the year to March 2024. This is a third higher than in the same period in 2014. However, the use of cautions to punish shoplifters has dropped from 16,281 in 2014 to just 2,077 in the last year, down 87%. In addition, there has also been a stop in the number of shoplifters prosecuted in court, with just 28,955 convictions over the last year (compared with 71,998 a decade ago).
In response to these findings, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, promised to "end the shameful neglect" of shoplifting by the police as she described the crime as "an epidemic in our society”.
Cooper said she would use her Crime and Policing Bill to give the police more power to ban repeat shoplifters from town centres.
The legislation will also attempt to scrap a rule introduced in 2014 that meant the police treated thefts of goods under £200 as a summary-only offence, making it considered a more serious crime.
Cooper added: "We will remove the £200 threshold, bring in stronger powers to ban repeat offenders from town centres, make assaults on shop workers a specific criminal offence, and, through our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we will put thousands more police onto our streets to crack down on shop theft, antisocial behaviour and the other crimes that blight our communities and make people feel unsafe.
"We cannot end this problem overnight. But we can end the shameful neglect of this problem that has allowed it to become an epidemic in our society."
Back in May, Archie Norman, the Chairman of Marks & Spencer, spoke out against the police, claiming they are "not interested" in tackling shoplifting, meaning retailers are left to spend "a lot of money" to keep crime rates down amid a wave of thefts.
The number of incidents against staff rose by 50% to 1,300 per day in the year to September 2023, from 870 the year before. About 8,800 of the total across the year resulted in injury. Shoplifting cost retailers about £1.8 billion in the latest year, the highest recorded amount and the first time it has surpassed the £1 billion mark, the BRC said.
Some of the retailers surveyed noted that the impact of the cost-of-living crisis changed the nature of shoplifting from one or two items to many.
Norman corroborated this, adding: "When people are hard up, or particularly when there’s a growth in other forms of crime, particularly drugs-related crime, then one way of financing it is to go and steal from shops… it’s understandable given what we’ve been through in the last couple of years, we’ve seen more of that."
At the time, Met Police commander Owain Richards assured that the police force was working with retailers across London to tackle the rise in theft. He said: "We know first-hand the impact that retail crime has on staff and businesses. We have renewed our commitment to tackling shoplifting and retail crime in collaboration with the wider business community... Our call handlers will assess each and every report and make an assessment based on available lines of enquiry."
