This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end.

First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible.

The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders.

However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door.

And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to.

And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money.

So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.

> However, because nothing is ever profitable enough

This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer.

If you think they just kept those new profits forever -- where did they go? Because grocery is an infamously low-margin business to be in, even now.

> and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows

Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it.

I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt