Police clearance rates of reported crimes have tanked in almost every category of crime. [1] Property crime saw a 30% reduction in clearance rates (17%->12%) from 2019-2022 despite funding/staffing staying flat or going up and crime rates/reporting rates going down.*
The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security.
Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4]
> “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call.
> “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing.
> However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.
> The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.
Econ or Bloomberg had an article about a month or two ago about stores locking up their merch and the motivations for it, and why it's such a stupid idea (sales plummet when you need an employee to unlock deoderant). One of the reasons for locking everything up is that they don't have good inventory management systems and when a manager or higher level person sees empty shelves they assume theft...but often times it either hasn't been ordered or simply hasn't been put on the shelves. Most real theft happens from the trucks delivering the goods.
I've read a lot of articles saying that the real problem with theft is from employees.
That might be true but it certainly hasn't made me feel good about watching people walk out with a big jug of wine, electronics, a case of toilet paper, etc. That last one provoked some curiosity - are their circumstances so bad that it's worth risking jail time or are there so little consequences that it's the equivalent of self check-out?
The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security.
Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4]
> “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call.
> “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing.
> However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.
> The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-so...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
[4] https://popular.info/p/off-target
*caveat that crime data is really complicated, don't take the numbers too literally