Organised criminals are behind the recent rise in shoplifting and violence against shop workers rather than people stealing to survive, one of the UK’s largest grocery chains has told a parliamentary inquiry.
Paul Gerrard, the public affairs director at the Co-op, told the House of Lords justice and home affairs committee into shoplifting that a 44% rise in retail crime it experienced last year was mostly down to gangs stealing to order at scale – clearing shelves in some cases.
“There have always been people who steal to make ends meet … and you could argue that happens more in a cost of living crisis,” he said. “But that is not what is driving the 44% increase.
“What is driving it is people stealing to order, people coming into store with wheelie bins or a builder’s bag to steal the entire confectionery section or spirits or meat section.
“If one of my colleagues gets in the way they won’t say sorry and walk out, there will be a violent threat; it might be a knife or might be a syringe. I’ve had colleagues attacked with a medieval mace. We’ve had colleagues lose their eye or colleagues miscarry. This is a level of violence, abuse and threat that nobody in retail has ever seen before.”
He added that the retailer, which has more than 2,000 stores across the UK, had been forced to help staff move home as they had been followed from a store and threatened.
Retailers have said the number of incidents of racial abuse, sexual harassment, physical assaults and threats with weapons rose 50% last year, while thefts more than doubled to 16.7m incidents, according to the British Retail Consortium, the trade body for the sector.
The rise in retail crime coincided with a period of rampant price inflation. The cost of everyday goods from eggs to baby formula has increased over the past three years at a rate not seen since records began in the 1970s, leaving many households struggling to keep their heads above water.
Reductions in shop staff in favour of technology such as self-checkouts are also thought to have contributed to the problems. Retailers blame a rise in organised crime and scarce police resources. They say police often fail to attend even when private security staff have apprehended someone with stolen goods.
Prof Emmeline Taylor of the University of London told the inquiry there had been a “tsunami” of retail crime, partly driven by wider social problems including poverty, mental health issues and drug addiction.
She said the recategorisation of the theft of items worth less than £200 as a summary offence in the 2014 Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act – intended to ease prosecution – had led to many police forces no longer taking action against shoplifting below that level.
“Many of those offenders I deal with in my work [feel] they had a licence to steal so long as they don’t surpass the £200 limit,” she told peers.
Taylor said the resulting cost of crime prevention and security in some businesses meant they were “simply no longer viable” and so some had been forced to permanently close, leaving some areas like “food deserts”.
Operation Pegasus, under which 15 large retailers are working with the police, partly by sharing CCTV images, to help tackle organised retail crime, was having some success but was set up only to deal with activity that crossed police boundaries, Taylor said.
She said there could be prolific local offenders who were part of a criminal network in their community who were falling through the net.
One example was a homeless drug addict being housed by a local woman who, in return for accommodation, issued a “shopping list” of items to be stolen that she then passed on to a network of buyers – some of whom would place orders online.
Taylor said that, given a drug addiction typically costs about £300 a deal and shoplifters get roughly a third of the value of what they steal, “you need to steal £900 worth” and have an “established network of buyers” to fund a habit.
Taylor said the Centre for Social Justice had suggested that 70% of local organised criminals were stealing to fund drug addiction.
