Nerd Pride Radio

Phoebe wrote:Apparently there has been a spike in shoplifting across the nation and stores are having trouble dealing with it and have adopted controversial policies.

In the last few days, I've done some spotty amateur research on this, because something about this rising tide of shoplifting doesn't ring quite true. So here's the best picture I can put together.

There are almost no hard statistics for "shoplifting". Retail operations don't track shoplifting per se. All they measure reliably is retail shrinkage, which essentially is any loss of merchandise. A third of that is estimated to be shoplifting/external theft, a third is employee/internal theft, and the rest is chalked up to damage, waste, mismanagement, fraud and unknown causes.

What we know about shrinkage is that it saw a dramatic rise starting in like 2015 or 2016, generally attributed to more organized theft rings, especially online, and with that came a move to higher ticket items, so maybe not so much a dramatic change in the number of incidents of theft, but definitely an increase in the dollar loss per incident. But since that first couple years, shrinkage actually dropped some and then leveled off. It is not as low as it was ten years ago, but it also has not changed significantly in the last two or three years. As far as I can tell.

And yet we have headlines proclaiming a rising epidemic of shoplifting, with articles definitively describing a 73% increase in shoplifting year over year. Or 54%. Or 26%? Not to mention numerous businesses shutting branches in certain trouble areas and citing shoplifting losses in those areas as the reason.

Turns out that the massive % increases come from surveys of small business owners asking them if they think shoplifting is up or down. Are they more or less worried. Have their losses increased. But all pretty subjective really. No actual stats. And despite most crime showing steady downward trends for decades in this country, every survey that asks about crime shows most people think it is worse now than a few years ago. People worry about crime, so ask small business owners about crime and you'll hear their worry. But also, I found articles where reporters pressed companies that claimed they closed some stores due to shoplifting and found evidence that the closures had been in the works for a long time. Companies would rather blame crime than admit they are downsizing and liquidating assets to increase shareholder returns.

Plus, these stories are favorites of Fox News as they show that liberal bastions of lawlessness like Portland have devolved into cesspools of danger.

I welcome new information and perspectives, but my initial impression is that the crimewave tales are overblown bullshit.

Thanks for the research, because this same issue never sat right with me. It seemed to much like those bullshit stories the media likes to feed us- like how everyone thinks people are handing out pot gummies at Halloween- that preys on unfounded white suburban fears. I've also noticed a racial element, with the news LOVING showing security camera footage of fast moving mobs of black people smashing and grabbing from Walgreens.

Part of it is that I was at the gas station just before all this and an old lady was filling her car on the other side of the pump. She struck up a conversation with me and when I revealed I had family in Texas, her response was "Those poor people." I needed clarification and ultimately got out of her that she felt bad for my family, because everyone in Texas is being overrun by this new wave of criminal immigrants. She clearly believed that good honest citizens of Texas were all having to bar their doors to keep from being beaten and robbed by the masses of brown people washing over them.

This incident was fresh in my head when Phoebe said "shoplifting", and they felt similar to me.

Thanks for the stats. Wish it was more well known.

Of course this is all because of "scary brown people." We as a human race need to declare war on othering. Not saying it's possible to totally remove "oh no, different people are scary" from our tribal instincts, but to make it so when we do it, something clicks in our head to question it. It's not easy, I've been trying.

I want to clarify something in all this- when we talk about "irrational fear of people different from us"- I'm not talking about Phoebe being a part of that group. And I assume no one else does either. If I'm correct, it's just something Phoebe mentioned that made Mike remember the conversation with the person at the gas station. Phoebe's good people.

Kyle wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 10:55 am Phoebe's good people.

Seconded.

Kyle wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 10:55 am I want to clarify something in all this- when we talk about "irrational fear of people different from us"- I'm not talking about Phoebe being a part of that group. And I assume no one else does either. If I'm correct, it's just something Phoebe mentioned that made Mike remember the conversation with the person at the gas station. Phoebe's good people.

Correct.

I just found one of the articles I'd seen during all this...

First is the Seattle Times on Sept 26 uncritically reporting Target's press release as news.

Followed up the next day with a more in depth look after reader complaints.

Essentially, shoppers reported that they didn't see evidence of all this crime and danger, so when they looked at police reports, they found out that some of the closing stores actually had lower rates of police reports than ones staying open, probably indicating that there was just less activity in general in those places, thus making them less profitable.

So then I reread the original article, quoting Target about all the steps they took to ensure employee safety, but in the end it just wasn't enough. Gross. They sat around a table and plotted how to lie to people and make themselves the heroes/victims of this narrative. Which I know they do all the time, but somehow having it confirmed so blatantly makes it even worse.

This whole thread was fascinating for the "facts about what is actually going on with shoplifting" element but then y'all said I was a decent human - I should have come here earlier and not closed the phone! I should have paid attention! My kid has been mad at me for three days because I emailed one of her teachers! People at the workplace are being tetchy in the meetings! I could have just read this thread and been contented and happy in life.

Something that interests me on the actual topic: twice a year I get to ask people, would you steal something if you could not get caught and no one would find out (e.g. your friends, mom)? If so, what would you steal? And invariably the majority says they would indeed steal things, but from "big box stores" and not from "local business". I feel like that evidence requires a deeper explanation but I'm not sure what it is - they've internalized the idea that a small business might have small margins and greater harm felt from losses, but the big ones are exploiting you anyway so you're just getting one back for the team if you could take something. This comes from groups you could vaguely categorize under both Bernie and Trump - same reasoning though.

Ain't that fascinating? That's refreshing. I'm assuming the admission of error contains a lot of bullshit and is primarily PR to wash over their previous claims. And I'm also assuming most people will never see this news and the earlier images of organized shoplifting mobs picking stores clean like piranha on a cow will linger in the zeitgeist for way too long. But it's still refreshing.

Exactly. That lady will still think that people living in Texas are being overrun by shoplifting gangs.

Yeah. Exactly like that.

What the hell. I haven't seen the slightest mention of the retraction, either - not until I saw it here just now. The narrative around this is already solid - I continue seeing references to the epidemic of shoplifting and the supposed fact that store personnel can't do anything but watch people run out with whole cart loads of stuff. What on earth.