SHOPLIFTING

compulsion, crime - or getting your own back ?

Anthony Weir
2015

One of the most potent and ridiculous Capitalist Doctrines

NOTE: Much of this web-page was written before the 'Banking Crisis' of 2008. It is now obvious that shoplifting is a tiny matter compared with the shameless criminality of banks in lending (at interest) what they did not have and engaging in malpractices which cost millions of people real money. Anyone working in a bank or 'the financial services industry' (the Mammon of Usury) has voluntarily implicated him/herself in the greatest financial swindle of all time. Supermarkets, themselves swindling their suppliers, as well as small businesses, are swindled least of all by petty shoplifters.   BUT: My Russian friend wrote to me to say 'When I was a student, just after the USSR collapsed, and Wild East Capitalism arrived, I worked as a night watchman in a shop. When something had disappeared from the stock the owner divided its cost among the staff - including the night watchman - and docked their wages accordingly. It was an expensive fashion shop and people frequently stole items — so I soon had to quit, having learned the lesson of social justice.'   In recent years the Criminal Justice System in the UK (which I prefer to call the Imperium of England and its Immediate Celtic Colonies) has started to take the view that petty pilfering is a technical offence - like not wearing a seat-belt, or speeding - rather than a moral outrage. Police now impose statutory fines on the spot which must be paid within 28 days. These fines are similar to those imposed for minor motoring offences.   Nevertheless, it remains true that the world is run by the criminally insane, high on greed, psychopaths who make millions work so that they can play power games, make war on small nations, manufacture better and better killing-machines, run vast prison services and gulags, and divest a teeming planet of its resources, its flora and its fauna. These people are bankers, investors, Venture Capitalists, the Christian Churches (especially the Vatican) : the rich who want to get richer. They are also Crime Ministers and International Agonisations including those involved in 'Aid'. These people define Civilisation, shrivelisation; they make sure that the poor breed ever more to provide labour. And when the poor start to get richer, they stamp on their replacement underclass. They want to urbanise us all, drivelise the world, manufacture our minds as well as all the rubbish they have sold us as they tell us it's what we need in order to hold our brainwashed heads up high. The barbed-wire roll of the World Dictatorship of Consumer Capitalism slowly unwinds and reduces us all.

 

2023 update:
a view from the business side of the tills

The Guardian, London, March 2024


IN MOST OF THE WORLD PILFERING
aka SHOPLIFTING
IS A FELONIOUS CRIME

...which, if you are a poor person of a beautiful colour
living in the Southern states of the USA,
could get you put away in jail
for a very long time indeed.

May 2016 Stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger is not a crime, Italy's highest court of appeal has ruled. Judges overturned a theft conviction against Roman Ostriakov after he stole cheese and sausages worth €4.07 (£3 / $4.50) from a supermarket. Mr Ostriakov, a homeless man of Ukrainian background, had taken the food "in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment", the Court of Cassation decided. Therefore it was not a crime, it said. A fellow customer informed the store's security in 2011, when Mr Ostriakov attempted to leave a Genoa supermarket with two pieces of cheese and a packet of sausages in his pocket - but paid only for breadsticks. In 2015, Mr Ostriakov was convicted of theft and sentenced to six months in gaol plus a €100 fine. read more => In Britain, an asylum-seeker caught stealing similar items is likely to be deported back to a country where s/he might be tortured or executed.

 

shoplifting and self-checkouts (2022) >

 

If you are seen to shoplift in France, or Spain, or Germany or Italy, or any number of European countries, the shop-owner or the security staff will, generally, either come up to you before you leave the store and remind you to pay for the items you have concealed about your person, or they will accost you as you leave the store, bring you to an office, and, with very serious faces, make you pay for the goods that you attempted to steal.

There is sometimes a queue of other shoplifters at this busy
'alternative till'.

Sometimes, they will ask you to pay 10% more than their value - to cover the costs of hiring security-staff, or as a little bonus to the diligent shop-assistant. They sell their goods.

In France, Italy etc. shoplifting is regarded as a technical offence (like exceeding a speed-limit), committed by students, the poor, the powerless and depressed - whereas in the more vindictive anglophone countries it is regarded as a moral crime against society.

Insofar as there are local newspapers in France,
shoplifting and other trivial crimes are not gleefully reported.
This marks a striking difference from anglophone cultures
whose newspapers are based on the principle of lurid and squalid 'revelation'.

Because of this, in anglophone countries the pilferer/thief will be watched, and allowed to leave the store. Then they will apprehend her or him dramatically, frog-march him or her back into the store - and call the police.

Singer-Celebrity Courtney Love's youthful theft of a Kiss tee-shirt from a Woolworth's in Eugene, Oregon actually led to a period in reform school!

In many stores there are dummy cameras to fool shoplifters. There are also hidden cameras in different locations designed to entrap shoplifters. This is, of course, illegal. Security firms are hired on their (quantitative) reputation for catching shoplifters, not (qualitatively) for preventing shoplifting (which is incalculable). Entrapment helps to improve the statistics in a competitive market.

Now CCTV cameras in big stores are connected to the internet so that neo-fascist collaborators can sit at home snooping - and inform the store.
This is Big Brother Next Door.

In Germany, many shops quite legally display signs announcing that any shop-lifter must pay a “Fangprämie” or fine for being caught - perhaps 50 euros- to the store if caught.

This excellent idea has, typically, been perverted in the US, and, more recently Britain. In the past few years, police have shown increasing reluctance to get involved in minor shop theft, so in Britain and America a new, and much more scary development has taken place: "Retail Loss Prevention" by private firms.

In 2009, over 80,000 people were apprehended in England alone and accused of shoplifting. Although many of these accusations were false and without any evidence whatsoever, the firm "Loss Prevention" extracted money from their victims as "compensation" for large shops (such as Boots) and as "Administration Fees".

People were blackmailed by threats of civil action, though not a single civil action was initiated against a single accused person. A civil action is an expensive business, so "Loss Prevention" frightens people further by telling them they will have to pay the substantial court costs if found guilty.

But the BBC followed one case where a woman had been falsely accused of stealing lip gloss (!) from Boots. No evidence of theft could be produced either by 'Loss Prevention' or Boots - whose statements conflicted with each other as well as with the blackmailed victim. Had the case gone to court (which in all likelihood it would not) it would have been thrown out immediately, and the firm would have been ordered to pay court costs. The victim might then have been in a position to take "Loss Prevention" to court for wrongful arrest and detention.

'Loss Prevention' has an impressive website which gives the implies that it works with the police, entirely within the law, is legally kosher, and suitably sanitised.

But they, like many 'Security Firms' actually entrap the genuine shoplifter and ensure that a crime that has been committed, so that they can apply pressure. This may seem to be better than calling the police, a most expensive service for which they pay nothing. But whereas the police require evidence and procedure, 'Retail Loss Prevention' agencies do not.

The same attitude applies at a more basic level to motoring: there are cameras and traps on British roads, but rarely any of the elaborate 'slow-down' warnings that are so common in France. Radar in Britain is used mainly to create offenders, whereas radar in France triggers flashing lights to make the motorist slow down. Traffic Wardens are instructed to entrap motorists who, for example, park briefly in a 'Loading Bay', rather than to advise them to park elsewhere. Thus I was once fined half of my weekly income, a sum which a member of the lawnmowing classes would simply regard as a fee.

In Germany, the act of theft is legally committed only if you hide an item. The Bavarian State Supreme Court pronounced on this:
“A person carrying an item openly, leaving a store in which he is not physically prevented from leaving [by way of a barrier etc.], to look at display racks on the footpath in front, does not commit a theft of said item, even when turning his back towards the racks...”

But in the British Isles and USA the pilferer is marched to a store-room. If a 'Retail Loss Prevention' firm is not plying its profitable trade, he or she is kept there until the police arrive (which may take a hour or two), he or she is then arrested, cautioned, taken to a police-station, cautioned again, searched, put into a cell to wait, then, after half an hour or an hour, interviewed by detectives (!),fingerprinted, photographed and has a DNA swab taken from his or her mouth.
Many forms are filled in.

A solicitor (attorney, advocate) may of course be requested by the criminal. But if he or she, caught in flagrante, 'admits guilt', this is hardly necessary.

The process and procedure take an hour or two, the thief is given back the property that was taken off him on arrival at the police-station, and is given a piece of paper instructing him or her to attend a Court hearing on a certain date. My own experience of this proceeding (for example after being caught in a Virgin Megastore - what happened to them, ruthless Mr Branson ?) is that the police are themselves embarrassed by the pettiness of it all, and are quite jokey while they do their dreary duty.

In exceptional circumstances, the criminal is kept in the police cell overnight and brought to Court the next day to be sentenced: to pay a fine or go to prison.

All this costs a great deal of money. The shop does not sell its goods.
The police waste their time - most of it on paperwork. The criminal court wastes everyone's time.
The crime-statistics are boosted - and the prison population, too.

No wonder that the United Kingdom has the highest per-capital prison population in Europe: higher even than Burma/Myanmar or Singapore. It has not yet reached the gargantuan level of the United States, which is less a land of the free than a land of the locked-up - with notorious examples of prisoners on Death Row for 23 years, just for having the 'wrong' (i.e. beautiful) skin-colour.

In the past, many shopkeepers ended up with almost-empty tills, and went bankrupt, not because of shoplifters (deserving and undeserving poor, perhaps) who were transported to Australia for their crimes (at the very least), but because the rich and the titled and the undeserving rich were at liberty to refuse to pay their bills.

 

This strategy is not likely to succeed.
If shoplifting in a large store, always wheel around 180 just before the exit,
just to check if anyone is following you.

Unless the shoplifter (or framed citizen) is simply handed a form of blackmail by a Retail Loss Prevention 'operative', with Notice to Pay hundreds of pounds in 'compensation, fees and costs' on pain of civil summons to a County Court, the compulsive shoplifter goes through this procedure every time he or she is seen to steal - whether it is a tin of beans, a book, or a box of candles. The financial wizard, on the other hand, who makes millions of dollars or pounds disappear, is rewarded with a million-dollar bonus. Public servants "fiddle" expenses The British law on theft, therefore, is a cynical mockery of natural justice - as is a great deal of criminal law which allows the Big and/or Important Boys (such a members of the august and obscure Privy Council) to get off 'Scot-free', while the small fry are fried.

I have seen a shoplifter taken away from Eason's, an ugly, aggressive stationery chain-store with hidden cameras in Belfast, for stealing a 2003 Diary which by the end of February 2003 had been marked down to half-price and was almost unsaleable.

So much for a 'just and equitable society'!

For other shoplifting activity in Belfast click  HERE .

It has recently been established that activities involving "getting one over", "pulling a fast one" on a person to whom you are made to feel inferior, or on a business, organisation or government, produce the same minor euphoria as certain drugs or alcohol, and can easily become addictive.

A survey conducted by discount vouchers peddlers VoucherCodesPro has revealed that one in five people admit to stealing items at supermarket self-service checkouts, adding up to £1.6bn ($2.4bn) worth of items every year, so frustrated are they with the ineptitude of their surrogate machine slaves. This has, naturally, been picked up by the press and featured in newspaper reports that pleasingly contain such archaic terms as pilfering (say it with me, folks: pilfering, isn't it nice?) but then again, we're threatening to prosecute people for "vagrancy" now, so why restrict our pre-industrial revolution nostalgia to language? We might as well go full-on medieval and chop these thieves' hands off. After all, £1.6bn (almost €2bn) does add up to a lot of unexpected items in a lot of bagging areas... read more

 

Inevitably regarding all property as theft (from the planet), always withdrawing (rather than withdrawn) I was a compulsive shoplifter. That is to say: a white nigger.
I have been in prison for stealing groceries.
Prison opened my eyes like those of the Sleeping Beauty.
I learned that the British actually like (almost as much as the punitive Americans) to have a large 'criminal' population to punish: they live in a feudal culture of revenge and punishment. Anglo-Saxon cultures inculcateinternal anger, which is vicious. Other cultures tend to externalise their anger more - and are despised by the Anglo-Saxon would-be world-rulers.

Prison was a strange and not unkind kind of awakening.

My life was shaped by shoplifted books which I could not possibly have afforded:
from Njál's Saga to Maupassant and Zola, from Euripides to Dostoyevski, Kafka, Steinbeck, O'Connor, Hesse, Hamsun,and Grass, (whom I was reading while my contemporaries were tinkering with engines and talking about girls); later on came Vesaas, Genet, Atwood, Atkinson...and a whole host of writers, for we are living in the Golden Age of the novel in English, which I am so well-equipped to appreciate.
Thus otherwise-unavailable worlds and world-views were revealed to me in 1950s Belfast - and since.

I first started stealing books when I was pretty young., maybe in the late 1940s. On Saturdays I used to take the bus to Belfast city centre and go to the brighter of the only two general bookstores in Belfast. There I would stand and read books, though which ones I have no idea. Biggles, perhaps ? After a while I was prevented from doing this, so instead I stole a book at a time, one a week. It was amazingly easy. For some reason (I think probably the danger of catching TB) I was not introduced to public lending libraries. The nearest one to my childhood home was poky and squalid. In fact I didn't start to use public libraries until I was over thirty. By that time they had become pleasant spaces, and I realised that I could order books even before they were published. At University I had used Inter-library Loan facilities, but I did not realise that these were available to Public Libraries, through which I even borrowed a book which had been sent from California.

When CDs were introduced, they seemed almost to be made just for stealing.

Shoplifters of the world - Steal silence! Steal peace!
You have nothing to lose but the pale shade of liberty.

In my teens I graduated rom books to vinyl records. Later, living 'below the bread-line' after I left home, I diversified into foodstuffs, household equipment and the occasional small objet d'art. Now in my eighties, I restrict myself mainly to pocketing a spotty banana from an odious supermarket, allowing it to ripen further, and then sauteeing it butter with fennel seeds to eat as a dessert with fromage blanc.

The London Review Bookshop reports a fondness by shoplifters for philosophers. “Our most-stolen authors, in order, are Baudrillard, Freud, Nietzsche, Graham Greene, Lacan, Camus, and whoever puts together the Wisden Almanack. “We caught a gent last Christmas with £400-worth of stolen books in his trousers and elsewhere. We grabbed all of the bags back, but he returned about half an hour later to reclaim a half-bottle of whisky and his dream journal, which had been at the bottom of one of the bags of stolen books. As we showed him the door he told us: ‘I hope you’ll consider this in the Žižekian spirit, as a radical reappropriation of knowledge.’”

In the British Isles, shoplifters are regarded with the same smug outrage that is visited on Roma.
In France and Italy it is assumed that many people will steal from shops if they get the chance. In Italy it is a kind of national sport, like driving through red traffic-lights or ogling pretty women.

When scheduled flights to Italy leave large British airports, police are drafted in to arrest Italians - who have stolen small items from the very-inviting airport shops - who are then very surprised to miss their flight, spend the night in a police cell, and receive a hefty fine in court the next day. So, if there are groups of Italians at an airport, be very careful - even if you are a blond Finn.

Because I loved to please my friends with thoughtful gifts, I stole many books in airports (mainly Dublin andd Toulouse), as well as Pernod (other brands were not available), Armagnac, Cognac and Romeo y Julieta cigars (other brands were not available).

The Italians and the French, however, recognise that shoplifting is the silliest and highest-risk of all 'crimes'. That it is, in fact, a pseudo-crime.
I am not talking about those people who shoplift, often to order, items worth hundreds or thousands of pounds/dollars/euros.
The chances of an unprofessional being caught are very great, and the return is tiny.
Small-time shoplifting is either a 'crime of opportunity', and thus is undetected, or it is a (largely-female) pseudo-crime of compulsion, whose in-store detection boosts the police success-rates. The police detection-rate of real crime is unbelievably low: less than 20%.

Shoplifting is also a symptom of certain diseases of the brain, especially Herpes simplex encephalitis. Although I suffer from some obscure and minor kind of encephalitis (undiagnosed), my shoplifting probably pre-dates it. In any case, I would not wish to justify shoplifting on medical grounds, for the medicalisation of society has long since exceeded the bounds of sanity. I would justify shoplifting from all but small and specialist shops on the same grounds as the punishers: supermarkets and chain-stores rip off their suppliers (and ultimately the planet) causing the poor to get poorer, themselves and their shareholders and Elected Representatives and rulers to get ever richer.

The busiest time for anti-shoplifting goons is midday/lunchtime.

Neither the police (of course), nor the judiciary, nor the legal profession have raised their voices to prevent the ridiculous waste of money involved in prosecuting people (usually women) who pilfer underwear, food, or marker-pens. If shops insist on doing everything to make their goods tempting, they should do their own dirty work. They happily make a profit of up to 1000% on what they sell - partly, I suppose, to cover the huge costs of CCTV cameras and the staff to operate and maintain them.

Britain with its notorious voyeuristic culture is completely besotted by Closed-circuit Television systems. Whole towns are under minute supervision, and many open roads, too. The insane 'War against Terror' is even more disquieting than you think.

shoplifting poem by william carlos williams

While Anglophones love to have criminals to fear and punish, they are amazingly indulgent towards big-time criminals such as Stock-market insider-fraud, tax-evaders, and other 'white-collar' criminals who defraud not only the state but pension funds as well. These are high-status macho criminals. Shoplifting is a female crime of low status - and, of course, the lower the status of the crime the more severe the relative punishment. Fiddling expenses, on the other hand, is almost never prosecuted. It is, more even than 'crimes against humanity', the most common crime of executive Heads of State.
Had Jean Genet been British, he would have been executed before he became one of Europe's greatest and most uncomfortable writers. Genet observed that police depend on criminals for their job-security and thus are bound into a vicious circle. The same is true of the anti-shoplifting industry, which now includes not only 'consultants' but counsellors - richly feeding off and dependent upon petty criminals.
Only in Britain (and, of course, the United States) would the compulsive and foolish Oscar Wilde have been so viciously treated.

Sitting like a normal at a desk
ogling a screen
I know that what is normal
is grotesque.

According to the Facts About Shoplifting link formerly on the (semi-literate) Shoplifters Alternative website, one out of every 11 people in the United States is a shoplifter.
How denunciatory the other ten people would be is harder to establish. Ethnic/cultural origin and family background would play a part. Probably one or two would regard it as relatively harmless and understandable (given the way goods are displayed in shops where staff congregate talking around a till), while one or two would regard it as more outrageous than sexual harassment, or religious or racial intolerance.

Shoplifters Alternative tells us that now, at last, shoplifting is being looked at as yet another Process Addiction over which some people could be powerless. (A Process Addiction is a compulsive behaviour in which a person becomes dependent on the whole behavioural process for a result, rather than on a chemical. Gambling, sex, collecting things and ambition are just four obvious, different and much-encouraged examples of process addictions.)
An addictive 'rush' can be induced by specific risky behaviours that can alter a person's emotional state through the release of adrenaline. As with jay-walking (or bungee-jumping, rock-climbing or bomb-defusing) the addictive effect of shoplifting is enhanced by success - i.e. by not being apprehended. People continue to do it even after they are caught and shamed and fined or sent to prison.

There are many acceptable things as dishonest as shoplifting: being a judge or jihadist, for example; dyeing one's hair and shaving - and pretending to care.

Shoplifters Alternative defines two categories of shoplifters: professional and non-professional. A professional shoplifter steals to resell merchandise (usually for a fraction of its retail value), perhaps in order to satisfy other addictive behaviour such as drug-taking. Although there are gangs of professionals who steal very expensive items, most professionals are poor.

The non-professional shoplifter is someone who obtains some emotional satisfaction from the process of stealing successfully. This individual is not stealing just for monetary or material gain but (also) to medicate a feeling of injustice or an internal conflict.

Reasons for non-professional shoplifting include the attempt to overcome unresolved issues toward an authority figure; a sense of social injustice; a sense of entitlement to overpriced goods (or due to the aggressive environment of the shop); the relief of stress through the adrenaline rush associated with the process of stealing; the abatement of emotional discomfort linked to feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, grief, powerlessness or boredom.

Walmart (Asda in the BritIsles) is, of course, the greatest robber baron in history.
The world's poorest are forced by supermarkets to subsidise, by disease, starvation and labour,
the underpriced groceries and clothing of the rich.

In an article titled "Shoplifting Can Be Addictive" by Shoplifters Alternative, the authors claim to describe the process that occurs as the shoplifter enters a store until he or she leaves. This alleged dynamic "involves a concurrent continuum of tension and excitement as the shoplifter contrives to conceal an item and eventually or quickly leave the store with it. Tension builds as the shoplifter encounters potential threats to the process and a sensation of excitement each time a possible threat, such as a salesperson or hidden camera, is overcome. The ultimate "high" occurs when the shoplifter's tension turns into excitement as he or she successfully leaves the store without being caught. This "high" temporarily relieves the emotional dilemma, whether positive or negative, that precipitated the theft process."

This wacky analysis has been dreamed up by someone who has never shoplifted. To some (especially poor) shoplifters he whole process is stressful. Leaving a shop without being apprehended does not necessarily produce much of a "high" - it can just as easily produce a feeling of relief. To complicate the complex, a Shoplifters Alternative survey found that 80% of shoplifters said that they didn't even think about getting caught.

In another piece of tergid jargon, they say that published reports suggest that there are no specific demographics that delineate the profile of the 'typical' shoplifter from others. However, it has been found that adults steal more than teenagers (only a small proportion of offenders caught are under 18), and that one third of those caught find it difficult not to re-offend. (In France untilrecently I still stole food items from supermarkets, such as cheeses or coffee under my armpits or in underpants. In Northern Ireland I did the same in Asda-Walmart, just to keep my hand in, for there the tag-alarms are often not manned, so (for example) printer-cartridges can be stolen even without cutting off the security-tag!)

Shoplifters Alternative sensibly considers shoplifting to be distinct from kleptomania - because 'the stealing-behaviour' of a kleptomaniac is impulsive rather than due to a compulsive psychological/physiological need. Kleptomania is also not premeditative.

What many store-owners refuse to realise is that crude fluorescent lighting, harsh décor, screaming displays of goods (not to mention tinnily-broadcast aggressive music and advertising) encourage not only panic-attacks but shoplifting as well. On the other hand, some supermarkets (especially in France, where employment costs are very high) now consider they can save more through staff wastage than they lose by stock wastage.

Shoplifters tend, of course, to regard their (often infrequent) activity as a victimless crime, no matter what background they have. After the first occasion, many people quickly become addicted to the little satisfaction of stealing something and getting away with it. Some, indeed, may not plan to steal when they first go into a mall or hypermarket or store, but they can't help it once they're inside. This suggests that there is, after all, no difference between addictive shoplifting and kleptomania.

Other websites remark that soon as a new anti-shoplifting measure is introduced - whether directed against theft by staff (more than 50% of the loss-value of all store-theft) or by potential customers - people find some way to beat it. Stores, needless to say, spend millions of dollars trying to stop shoplifters: a bit like trying to catch water in a sieve. The cost of prevention and of shrinkage are passed on in the retail price.

In the 'good old days' of the 1960s, before global warming was even dreamt of (though the hideous overpopulation of the planet was a concern for some), I could walk into a record and hi-fi store with a large raffia bag and casually put a big Bang & Olufsen tuner-amplifier into it and walk out. With the same bag I subsequently stole many LPs - classical, of course. My large raincoat, bag and beard were simply ignored in favour of my 'polite' accent and interest in Sibelius symphonies - even though I bought nothing in the store! I am, if anything, ever-anomalous. Today, I would have to be much more subtle and savvy. But today, such items can be obtained so cheaply that I prefer, in the lovely twilight of my life, to buy them through eBay or shoplift them without fear of prosecution through Torrent (P2P) and other sites.

"Experts" say that the most popular stores affected by shoplifters are grocery stores.
Thefts from retail outlets occur mostly in urban main shopping areas. The figures for the city of Sheffield (England) have remained steady over several years at about 3,000 - which is, of course, is an unquantifiable fraction of offences committed.

update 2023: shopflifting out of control :
stores need to up their game >

 

Apart from the paid-for carton of apple-juice, this man is also carrying
2 x 250g packets of coffee in his armpits, two Rocamadour cheeses
in his underwear, and a flat sheep's cheese in each pocket.

 

Shoplifting is - in the short term at least - one of the only profitable addictions.

Compulsive fraud is another.

Especially when carried out by salaried staff in 'the financial sector'.