The thief was in no hurry. Seeing a pile of electric fans arranged near the front of the shop, on a busy street in Brixton, south London, he sauntered in, tucked one under his arm, and sauntered out. The cashier, fiddling with a broken self-checkout till, didn’t notice. If she had, it is unlikely she would have tried to stop him.

In an era of generally falling crime, shoplifting is rising. In the year to March 2023, police reported 342,343 cases of it, up by 24% on the previous year. That tally is, doubtless, a small share of total shop thefts. The British Retail Consortium (brc) has warned retail crime is “soaring across the country.” Primark, a cheap fashion chain, said this month shoplifting had dented its profits. Dame Sharon White, chair of the John Lewis Partnership (which owns shops and Waitrose, a supermarket), described it as an “epidemic”.

The reported statistics are less dramatic than they might at first appear: they are, more or less, back to pre-pandemic levels. Shoplifting dropped sharply when Britons were locked down. Yet the past decade has seen a gradual uptick in such crimes. And the brc says in some cities retail crime is rising particularly sharply.

Patchy data don’t reveal exactly who is swiping from shops, nor why. The cost of living crisis is often blamed. But anecdotal evidence, including from academics, suggests that plays only a small part. The Association of Convenience Stores (acs) which represents 33,500 small, local shops, says most shoplifters are repeat offenders, often with drug or alcohol problems.

Emmeline Taylor, a professor of criminology at City University, says such thieves may steal to order, after first getting “a shopping list” from a criminal gang. Popular items include alcohol, baby formula, confectionary and meat, which some shops report are swiped in bulk, to be sold elsewhere. Gangs are much less likely to be involved in some other types of theft, most notably burglaries, which have been declining for 20 years.

A change to the law in 2014 may, unwittingly, have encouraged gangs to recruit shoplifters, while also spurring individuals to steal for themselves. It made shoplifting of goods worth £200 ($245) or less a summary offence, one that is tried in a magistrates’ (rather than the crown) court. That has probably discouraged police from investigating such crimes.

The police are more likely to pursue repeat offenders, who are often given brief, successive prison sentences. This achieves little. Instead, the government should impose drug rehabilitation orders on those who are stealing in order to fund addiction. Such efforts would also help to address another trend reported by retailers: shoplifters appear to be getting more aggressive, even ready to threaten violence, which discourages staff from confronting them.

Retailers are working more with police. John Lewis and other shops are funding a project, dubbed “Pegasus”, that will see more cctv footage and other intelligence passed on to officers. Graham Wynn, assistant director of business and regulation for the brc, calls that “worthy” but says he wants the police to “give greater priority to retail crime.”

Is that realistic? Graham Farrell, a professor of crime science at the University of Leeds, points out that only around 2% of crimes (of all sorts) result in a conviction. Therefore it makes more sense for shops to focus instead on making them more difficult to commit in the first place. Big shops full of tempting goods “generate great crime opportunities,” he says. Self-checkouts won’t have helped.

The most effective measures include fitting more “hot products” with security tags, moving high-value items away from entrances and arranging aisles so staff can see down them more easily. Researchers point out that posting someone to greet shoppers at the door can reduce theft, though only high-end shops tend to do this. Not all petty criminals are as shameless as the fan thief in Brixton. ■