Headed into the holiday season, the retail industry is wrangling with a surge in shoplifting and possible solutions to prevent theft. The upsurge may be an inadvertent consequence of another trend: automation.
With stores now having fewer people minding them, thieves have felt emboldened. Trade groups are pushing for new federal legislation to help fix the problem. A better solution would be for businesses to realize that workers are a greater anti-theft asset than they think.
Retail businesses are being hit hard by theft. The National Retail Federation trade group reported last year that “shrink,” the industry term for store theft, accounted for $112.1 billion in losses in 2022, up from $93.9 billion in 2021. The NRF has yet to release figures for 2023, but an industry source indicated the problem has not abated.
As many consumers have noticed, the industry is responding by putting goods behind lock and key. The National Retail Federation said stores are also looking for high-tech solutions to deter theft.
But efforts at legislative fixes seem irresistible. The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, for example, would create an organized retail theft division within the Department of Homeland Security. And CNBC reports that since 2022 nine states have passed laws increasing the penalty for retail theft.
A much more direct, easier solution might be the oldest and simplest one: Hire more people to monitor the floors. This will reduce the opportunities for thieves and embolden store owners and workers to stop theft when it happens. It will also make the stores appear to be more a part of the community where friends and neighbors work and less like the large vending machines they have become.
Executives running retail stores have realized this problem, said journalist Marc Fisher, author of a recent study on the rise of shoplifting for the Atlantic Monthly. They’re struggling to figure out what to do, Fisher told this author.
“All of the retail industry executives, retail security experts and criminologists I spoke with cited automation as one of the key causes of the current crisis,” he wrote in an email. “The shift toward automating everything from checkout to store security has been accompanied by big cuts in staffing, which in turn came about in part as a cost-saving measure and, perhaps more often, because of the difficulty in hiring and retaining shop workers.”
The lack of store staff means that not only are there fewer workers to spot shoplifting, but they are more likely to be reluctant to try to stop thieves because they have fewer co-workers to back them up should the situation escalate.
Management needs to remember that workers are an asset, not just for labor productivity but also for intangible human qualities they bring to the shopping experience: the pride they bring to making sure their section is clean and well-stocked; the assistance they can give to customers searching for the right item; or the ability to respond to unusual situations like a customer having a health emergency. Thieves are less likely to steal if they can see multiple people watching them rather than just one.
Fixing the crisis does not require federal legislation or tougher criminal sentences or stricter security measures or more elaborate surveillance. It requires more workers. That is something management can easily fix. It will cost more, of course, but it is a worthwhile investment.
Sean Higgins is a research fellow specializing in labor policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for Tribune News Service.
