Who Makes From Shoplifting

Over the past few years, shoplifting has become a widespread crime in the UK, with retailers suffering multi-billion-pound losses.  Auror is a New Zealand based company who have developed a data-sharing system that enables them to identify the most prevalent offenders and to pass that information on to the police.

Auror estimates that 70% of shoplifting offences are carried out by 10% of criminals, which probably isn’t a surprise, as Pareto’s Principle would suggest that 80% of offences are carried out by 20% of offenders.  But whether it’s 70/10 or 80/20, it always was going to be the case that the bulk of the thefts were being undertaken by relatively few people.

However, it’s hard to know who the biggest winners from shoplifting are: the shoplifters themselves, who probably don’t realise the true value of what they have stolen; the security industry, which has sold at least £2bn in equipment and services; or HM Treasury. The Treasury has made money from VAT receipts on all that equipment and services; it also gains from the security industry’s profits, as well as tax on its employees.

The losers, of course, are the retailers and their customers, but if the police had dealt with the upward trend, perhaps those 10% of criminals would have been caught; but then the security industry and the Treasury would not have made as much money.