The NRF said total annual shrink reached $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion from 2020. I can sympathize with someone stealing a sandwich because they are hungry, but not with a thief clearing an entire shelf of products and calmly walking out of a Target store.”Īccording to the National Retail Federation, the industry’s biggest trade group, large-scale store theft is becoming a bigger part of annual retail “shrink,” a term that refers to merchandise that goes missing due to theft, fraud, damage and other reasons. Retail crime, he said, is an unfortunate consequence of this as well. “Gun violence has exploded, bad behavior among citizenry has exploded, civil discord is high and Americans are very polarized.” “We’re in a period where bad behavior is legitimized, even normalized,” said Cohen. Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, agreed that the “multi-layered” problem of escalating retail crime does shine a light on social distress at any given point in time. “What’s happening in the overall economy matters when you analyze retail crime overall, but also what is happening more locally, in towns and neighborhoods,” said Hayes. The recent slowing of inflation, it said, “has so far done little to provide relief for Americans, and it may take more dramatic changes in prices for the harmful effects of inflation to subside.”ĭeepening the financial burden for many in those households is the loss of Covid-era boosts to food aid earlier this year, which is likely creating more constraints on families, he said. “Even as inflation has been cooling, the effect of continued high prices has broadened the financial pain Americans are feeling,” the Gallup report said. Among them, lower-income households reported feeling the greatest strain versus higher income brackets. The real reasons stores such as Walmart and Starbucks are closing in big citiesĪccording to a recent Gallup poll, three in five Americans, or 61%, are suffering financial hardship because of rising prices. “Millions of Americans can’t afford to fully buy their groceries or a full tank of gas, pay for public transportation, their home bills or pay their credit card debt,” he said.Ĭhin Hei Leung/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images Although inflation is cooling - slowly - US prices are still on the rise, even after a two-year slog of consumers enduring painfully high prices on everything they need to sustain themselves and their families.Įconomic distress is amplified on budget-strapped consumers during inflationary periods, said Burt Flickinger, retail expert and managing director of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group. The stolen goods are most often sold online or to neighborhood mom and pop shops or at street fairs, for example.Īmong the triggers for shoplifters is inflation. It’s an opportunistic crew stealing specific items from a specific place or one item from many places to resell them,” said Hayes. The bigger bucket, however, is crime of opportunity. They’re taking necessities like bread and meat. “There is a trend of people who may have never stolen before, they are unsophisticated in how they steal. He described two types of store theft plaguing retailers currently. Now they can’t afford basic necessities,” said Read Hayes, criminologist at the University of Florida and director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, which has members including retailers such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Gap. “A community might be struggling with heavy job losses and people can’t easily find another job. Need and opportunity become forceful catalysts for driving up incidents of retail crime, experts said. But as economic fears grow amid inflation and rising borrowing costs, shoplifting often comes with the territory, industry watchers say. It’s not clear that crime is growing significantly more serious. Many other retailers have blamed crime for closing stores. Nordstrom, Whole Foods and some other big chains said they were abandoning San Francisco because of changing economic conditions or employee safety. Target last week said it was bracing to lose half a billion dollars this year because of rising theft. Lele Pons ft.Retailers large and small say they’re struggling to contain an escalation in store crimes - petty shoplifting to organized sprees of large-scale theft that clear entire shelves of products.
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