For 32 years, the National Retail Federation (NRF) — the lobbying group representing major retailers in the United States — has produced the "National Retail Security Survey." The survey, widely cited by media outlets, attempts to estimate the total retail "shrink" in the industry by collecting data from major retailers.
Judd continues to do the hard work that comes with real investigative journalism. His report on the NRF is a perfect example. Who else is reporting on this or understands its importance? Dollar-for-dollar my best & most trusted source for this kind of news.
Yes, this is another way that the "criminal legal system" gets to vilify the poor in order to keep them poor and ignore underlying conditions that push us all into poverty. Poor people are easily deprived of rights and thus exploited. I see them every time I go to do my little CJS court watch duties. I encourage you all to go observe a misdemeanor court session or two, especially jail clearance where "shoplifters" are railroaded into jail and probation. One poor fellow was forced to stand out in front a Red Lobster of all places wearing a sign that said "I am a thief." (Wonderful country this USA). BTW I stole a cap gun from a 5 and dime. Damn it, I forgot to steel the caps. That was 60 years ago. If I'd been caught, I probably would have lead a very different life. A regular John Dillinger I was.
I work at a big box store and I confront this lie daily. Explaining to people that our security measures are not as necessary at our store as theft is such small percentage, but when the dollar figure is talked about, ot sounds bigger than it really is. Skewed information to build fear.
I recall going to a shoe store to return some sneakers. I literally stood at the front counter for 5 minutes, waiting for somebody to come help me. I had to actually yell for help. I could easily have walked off with many non-tagged items hanging along the register aisle. The retail industry wants to have everyone focus on theft rather than their inadequate staffing, due to low pay, lousy benefits, and unpredictable hours. "Look there!" is always a good distraction plan.
Shoplifting happens. It is a real problem. It is not, however, a crisis. I worked for a well known outdoor apparel and lifestyle company for a number of years. We had two or three very expensive GoPro cameras in a locked case and two or three very expensive jackets equipped with anti-theft devices, but the rest of it was easy to access, try on or test. And we were told that even if we saw shoplifting happen we were only to mildly confront the person. If they went out the door we were to let them go. The losses were an acceptable price to pay for customer service and to keep the staff safe from potentially violent, or false, confrontations.
I'm guessing: were salespeople told to avoid loud confrontations because they cold lead to violence in the store. Was the store ready to call law enforcement--were you allowed to do--that when the goods walked out the door with obvious criminal intent?
Great reporting as always! Details ,analysis , questions unanswered.
You can bet the local nightly news will present nothing close to this reporting.
Judd Thanks once again for real reporting….rather than sound bites, miss conceptions, false impressions, all of which 1/2 this country wants to believe.
Great article. But I thought that Popular Information, or possibly another similar group, published a report within the past six months stating that large retailers wanted to shift blame for poor financial results away from their management to shoplifting.
As the article says, in 2023 like other years, outside theft was 36% of the ‘shrink’. So in that other 64% there is the failure to control or stop internal theft, bad inventory management & other types of mismanagement. Plus, if ‘shrink’ is steady at 1.5-1.6% of sales it is not major force driving costs / prices.
Now the big supplier of retail security products has sponsored a ‘survey’ which surveyed senior loss prevention & security executives about shoplifting trends. Not retailers.
Are the big security execs interested in saying they’ve failed to stop internal theft? Are they the ones who would say inventory management failures are a problem? Has the industry collected actual data?
Nope. They were only asked about their views on shoplifting trends. They responded with the ‘party line.’
“Jeff Asher, an analyst specializing in criminal justice data, told Popular Information he was skeptical of the numbers in the new NRF report. Asher said the NRF's findings should be "taken with a grain of salt" because they are "based on a survey of impressions rather than any meticulously collected evidence."
The “impression” the industry wants to provide is the “impression” captured in the survey by a company that stands to profit from the “impression.”
I very, very much appreciate this deep dive into what the NRF has done and how -- not least because I suspect that other industrial lobbying groups are similarly manipulating statistics to fit their preferred narrative, i.e., propaganda.
With as much on line shopping as we do now, shoplifting would most logically be decreasing. There are fewer people actually in stores today than in prior years.
COVID lockdown trained us to order on-line and the habit continues.
How many days before I see this misleading and self-serving “news” enthusiastically reported, on Fox, accompanied, as always, by frightening video? Not just Fox; other media will dutifully parrot this “report” which happens to originate with their advertisers.
Not to mention the drive for more and longer incarcerations at privately funded prisons, a pet profit center for our oligarchs. It's no wonder that they are salivating at the prospect of vast holding areas or concentration camps provided by, of course, private contractors and builders, for the millions of deportees to be arrested next year.
I’m somewhat in the middle on this issue, and far from an expert.
On one hand, as Judd has reported before, shoplifting is increasingly being used as a corporate scapegoat to blame for poor business performance, and also a right wing fearmongering talking point to push narratives about the decline of cities and the need for heavy-handed law enforcement.
On the other, I think there are some on the left who are using it as part of a general anticapitalist critique that isn’t helping liberals win these arguments. “Yeah but the corporations are already rich and the thieves are poor” is not really a strong justification for rooting for crime.
Judd is doing great work (and is often the only one) poking holes in corporate shoplifting rhetoric using the actual data. I just think we shouldn’t lose sight of the shoplifting that does happen and act like it’s justified because the victims are ostensibly rich and can afford it. We should be supporting larger reforms and assistance for the poor and homeless rather than acting like this particular type of crime either doesn’t exist, or is acceptable because of who is on either side of the crime.
OK as far as it goes. I’ve never interpreted the pushback on this as the ‘rich’ being able to afford the losses - except to counter the narrative that companies are being driven out of business by “shrink.” Shrink happened to be 64% driven by problems within companies - internal theft and bad management. Even so, I think it is fair to point out that at 1.5-1.6% of sales it is not a giant threat to retailers & the economy.
Usually I’ve seen the rich v poor argument used quite differently. That what we called ‘petty theft’ in the past does not deserve disproportionately severe punishment. The excuse for these punishments & ‘enhancements’ is to “save the retailers”.
Seriously, which is a larger threat to society?
A petty thief? A shoplifter?
Or a dr who pleads guilty to a federal charge of giving his staff pre-signed prescriptions for opioids and get 1 yr’s probation. Probation for about the time period listed in the charges. (The state medical board issued an emergency order to suspend his authority to prescribe etc. such medications.)
I’ll spare us all the direct line from one to the other.
"“Yeah but the corporations are already rich and the thieves are poor” is not really a strong justification for rooting for crime." I have not heard any mainstream leftists use this type of justification. What I HAVE heard is right wingers CLAIM that left wingers use this type of justification. It is a lie compounded on a previous lie (that retail theft is a crisis) used by right wingers in an attempt to discredit the truth. Par for the course from right wing propogandists. It worked: here you are publishing the right wing lie as a fact.
I'm starting an initiative to provide ice water to all those folks languishing in hell.
Won't you please THINK of those poor, thirsty children BAKING in the hot fires while TOILING away, their little footsies BLEEDING as they stagger further, tripping on their chains as they STRAIN to turn the wheel and GIVE generously?
PLEASE? We can send you the FULL repoort and you will SEE the truth for YOURSELF! Please? It's for the children and on YOUR soul!
Judd continues to do the hard work that comes with real investigative journalism. His report on the NRF is a perfect example. Who else is reporting on this or understands its importance? Dollar-for-dollar my best & most trusted source for this kind of news.
Yes, this is another way that the "criminal legal system" gets to vilify the poor in order to keep them poor and ignore underlying conditions that push us all into poverty. Poor people are easily deprived of rights and thus exploited. I see them every time I go to do my little CJS court watch duties. I encourage you all to go observe a misdemeanor court session or two, especially jail clearance where "shoplifters" are railroaded into jail and probation. One poor fellow was forced to stand out in front a Red Lobster of all places wearing a sign that said "I am a thief." (Wonderful country this USA). BTW I stole a cap gun from a 5 and dime. Damn it, I forgot to steel the caps. That was 60 years ago. If I'd been caught, I probably would have lead a very different life. A regular John Dillinger I was.
I'm sending this to my brothers who watch too much cable news and think shoplifters should get life imprisonment sentences!
Thank you Judd for providing clarity!
I work at a big box store and I confront this lie daily. Explaining to people that our security measures are not as necessary at our store as theft is such small percentage, but when the dollar figure is talked about, ot sounds bigger than it really is. Skewed information to build fear.
I recall going to a shoe store to return some sneakers. I literally stood at the front counter for 5 minutes, waiting for somebody to come help me. I had to actually yell for help. I could easily have walked off with many non-tagged items hanging along the register aisle. The retail industry wants to have everyone focus on theft rather than their inadequate staffing, due to low pay, lousy benefits, and unpredictable hours. "Look there!" is always a good distraction plan.
Shoplifting happens. It is a real problem. It is not, however, a crisis. I worked for a well known outdoor apparel and lifestyle company for a number of years. We had two or three very expensive GoPro cameras in a locked case and two or three very expensive jackets equipped with anti-theft devices, but the rest of it was easy to access, try on or test. And we were told that even if we saw shoplifting happen we were only to mildly confront the person. If they went out the door we were to let them go. The losses were an acceptable price to pay for customer service and to keep the staff safe from potentially violent, or false, confrontations.
I'm guessing: were salespeople told to avoid loud confrontations because they cold lead to violence in the store. Was the store ready to call law enforcement--were you allowed to do--that when the goods walked out the door with obvious criminal intent?
Great reporting as always! Details ,analysis , questions unanswered.
You can bet the local nightly news will present nothing close to this reporting.
Judd Thanks once again for real reporting….rather than sound bites, miss conceptions, false impressions, all of which 1/2 this country wants to believe.
Great article. But I thought that Popular Information, or possibly another similar group, published a report within the past six months stating that large retailers wanted to shift blame for poor financial results away from their management to shoplifting.
As the article says, in 2023 like other years, outside theft was 36% of the ‘shrink’. So in that other 64% there is the failure to control or stop internal theft, bad inventory management & other types of mismanagement. Plus, if ‘shrink’ is steady at 1.5-1.6% of sales it is not major force driving costs / prices.
Now the big supplier of retail security products has sponsored a ‘survey’ which surveyed senior loss prevention & security executives about shoplifting trends. Not retailers.
Are the big security execs interested in saying they’ve failed to stop internal theft? Are they the ones who would say inventory management failures are a problem? Has the industry collected actual data?
Nope. They were only asked about their views on shoplifting trends. They responded with the ‘party line.’
“Jeff Asher, an analyst specializing in criminal justice data, told Popular Information he was skeptical of the numbers in the new NRF report. Asher said the NRF's findings should be "taken with a grain of salt" because they are "based on a survey of impressions rather than any meticulously collected evidence."
The “impression” the industry wants to provide is the “impression” captured in the survey by a company that stands to profit from the “impression.”
I very, very much appreciate this deep dive into what the NRF has done and how -- not least because I suspect that other industrial lobbying groups are similarly manipulating statistics to fit their preferred narrative, i.e., propaganda.
Just noticed that if you add a vowel, NRF spells "nerf." Now I'm thinking of Popular Information as a Nerf blaster.
With as much on line shopping as we do now, shoplifting would most logically be decreasing. There are fewer people actually in stores today than in prior years.
COVID lockdown trained us to order on-line and the habit continues.
This is a really good point.
Ms. Cogan, interesting point.
I love a good data takedown!
As usual, Judd does the hard work and reporting that MSM isn’t willing to do. Proud to be a supporter of PI!
Damn right!!!
How many days before I see this misleading and self-serving “news” enthusiastically reported, on Fox, accompanied, as always, by frightening video? Not just Fox; other media will dutifully parrot this “report” which happens to originate with their advertisers.
Tomorrow? Try tonight! Lies will make it around the world in no time flat but the truth?
Not to mention the drive for more and longer incarcerations at privately funded prisons, a pet profit center for our oligarchs. It's no wonder that they are salivating at the prospect of vast holding areas or concentration camps provided by, of course, private contractors and builders, for the millions of deportees to be arrested next year.
I’m somewhat in the middle on this issue, and far from an expert.
On one hand, as Judd has reported before, shoplifting is increasingly being used as a corporate scapegoat to blame for poor business performance, and also a right wing fearmongering talking point to push narratives about the decline of cities and the need for heavy-handed law enforcement.
On the other, I think there are some on the left who are using it as part of a general anticapitalist critique that isn’t helping liberals win these arguments. “Yeah but the corporations are already rich and the thieves are poor” is not really a strong justification for rooting for crime.
Judd is doing great work (and is often the only one) poking holes in corporate shoplifting rhetoric using the actual data. I just think we shouldn’t lose sight of the shoplifting that does happen and act like it’s justified because the victims are ostensibly rich and can afford it. We should be supporting larger reforms and assistance for the poor and homeless rather than acting like this particular type of crime either doesn’t exist, or is acceptable because of who is on either side of the crime.
OK as far as it goes. I’ve never interpreted the pushback on this as the ‘rich’ being able to afford the losses - except to counter the narrative that companies are being driven out of business by “shrink.” Shrink happened to be 64% driven by problems within companies - internal theft and bad management. Even so, I think it is fair to point out that at 1.5-1.6% of sales it is not a giant threat to retailers & the economy.
Usually I’ve seen the rich v poor argument used quite differently. That what we called ‘petty theft’ in the past does not deserve disproportionately severe punishment. The excuse for these punishments & ‘enhancements’ is to “save the retailers”.
Seriously, which is a larger threat to society?
A petty thief? A shoplifter?
Or a dr who pleads guilty to a federal charge of giving his staff pre-signed prescriptions for opioids and get 1 yr’s probation. Probation for about the time period listed in the charges. (The state medical board issued an emergency order to suspend his authority to prescribe etc. such medications.)
I’ll spare us all the direct line from one to the other.
"“Yeah but the corporations are already rich and the thieves are poor” is not really a strong justification for rooting for crime." I have not heard any mainstream leftists use this type of justification. What I HAVE heard is right wingers CLAIM that left wingers use this type of justification. It is a lie compounded on a previous lie (that retail theft is a crisis) used by right wingers in an attempt to discredit the truth. Par for the course from right wing propogandists. It worked: here you are publishing the right wing lie as a fact.
What in the name of gods green earth is fitting room visibility? If it’s what it sounds like how is it legal?
A report written for the NRF by an NRF contractor/benefactor that confirms NRF's position. Must be true.
I'm starting an initiative to provide ice water to all those folks languishing in hell.
Won't you please THINK of those poor, thirsty children BAKING in the hot fires while TOILING away, their little footsies BLEEDING as they stagger further, tripping on their chains as they STRAIN to turn the wheel and GIVE generously?
PLEASE? We can send you the FULL repoort and you will SEE the truth for YOURSELF! Please? It's for the children and on YOUR soul!