- cross-posted to:
- shoplifting@slrpnk.net
- politics@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- shoplifting@slrpnk.net
- politics@lemmy.world
- news@lemmy.world
It turns out shoplifting isn’t spiraling out of control, but lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes anyway.
Over the last couple of years, it seemed that America was experiencing a shoplifting epidemic. Videos of people brazenly stealing merchandise from retailers often went viral; chains closed some of their stores and cited a rise in theft as the primary reason; and drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens started locking up more of their inventory, including everyday items like toothpaste, soaps, and snacks. Lawmakers from both major parties called for, and in some cases even implemented, more punitive law enforcement policies aimed at bucking the apparent trend.
But evidence of a spike in shoplifting, it turns out, was mostly anecdotal. In fact, there’s little data to suggest that there’s a nationwide problem in need of an immediate response from city councils or state legislatures. Instead, what America seems to be experiencing is less of a shoplifting wave and more of a moral panic.
…
Now, those more forgiving criminal justice policies are at risk, in part because of a perceived trend that appears to have been overblown.
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“a moral panic”… generating this is standard operating procedure for the people in charge.
if you want to bring the hammer down, develop ‘a moral panic’ and get those susceptible constituents to go along with it.
hate brown people? pretend there is an immigration problem. scared of homosexuals? dont ya know, theyre comin to convert your kids.
“a moral panic” is the rod conservatives use to beat their voters into submission with.
Yep, gotta agree here.
It’s not so much that there’s a conspiracy or anything that defined, but Facebook or other non-authoritative news sources create a “news-wave” (as opposed to a “crime wave”), and legislators come across it and balk.
It’s not so much that there’s a conspiracy or anything that defined,
I mean, I do think some people (maybe conservatives especially) have a psychological longing to live through a moment of crisis where they can live out a brave hero fantasy, and they’re always looking for that moment of crisis, and legislators and others are just organically responding to that, but there are definitely some organizations out there that are pushing this particular moment of crisis
I thought that was gonna be a link to the Project Veritas fraud farm but yeah, fuck the NRF too!
*>“a moral panic” is the rod conservatives use to beat their voters into submission with.
Not just conservatives.
FTA:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a press conference on reducing shoplifting.
Edit: Apparently I don’t know shit about Eric Adams, who was not only a cop, but a supporter of the “stop and frisk” policy.
“Not just conservatives” he says and mentions fascist cop (but I repeat myself) Eric Adams as an example 🤦
Fun* fact: most of the Dem party top is conservative to the point of being to the right of Reagan
*and by “Fun” I mean tragic and infuriating
“Not just conservatives” he says and mentions fascist cop (but I repeat myself) Eric Adams as an example 🤦
Yeah, I deserved that. I didn’t do my research.
Not really a good example. As the article indicates, most of the 24 tracked cities saw an average drop in shoplifting. The main exceptions were New York and Los Angeles which saw increased shoplifting rates, especially compared to 2019. This means that Eric Adams appears to be addressing a real problem occurring in New york, vs maybe other cities which may be attempting to address non existent problems (or problems which the information we track doesn’t show).
New York and Los Angeles which saw increased shoplifting rates
Increased ARREST rates for shoplifting. Both the NYPD and the LAPD as well as the LA County Sheriff are infamous for overpolicing, especially of poor people and minorities. Add at least one “tough on crime mayor” and arrests for poverty-related crimes go up regardless of whether crime does.
This means that Eric Adams appears to be addressing a real problem
“Appears to” being the operative words.
Conservative is as conservative does.
lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for low-level and nonviolent crimes
Oh joy, when we did this in the 90s it ended with the Supreme Court saying there’s no issue with giving a life sentence to a father of three for stealing VHSs of children’s movies from a K-Mart. I imagine some details will change this time around, but not the important one.
These days it will be a life sentence for a single mother stealing baby formula.
I mean what fun are crippling poverty, miserable healthcare and horrific political ideologies if you can’t rub it in our face every single fuckin chance that comes around?
Citations Needed had an episode about this. Extraordinary bullshit media narrative around shoplifting
And barely a peep about corporate price gouging, wage slavery, etc etc
This is all cover for the wage theft addiction bosses have.
https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime
PBS Newshour covered this last week, too, saying it’s mostly a bullshit excuse (in whisper-talk).
Just once, I want a PBS host to bellow with the volume of a Republican that just watched the newest Project Veritas fraud 😁
Closest they come is at the beginning when they’re thanking the billionaires for their financial support.
“This episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is brought to you by Capital One and FTX: what WAS in your wallet?”
woah, I never thought I’d see another listener in the wild. cool beans.
That was the point. It was a narrative shift operation.
Channel 5 did a few videos recently in SF. Really highlights shoplifting and reselling schemes that are incredibly common in that area.
I wouldn’t say it’s nation wide, but there’s definitely an issue with shoplifting in these areas with incredibly lowered penalties for shoplifting.
There’s a bunch of other things covered in this video, but there’s a good view on the shoplifting.
Quite literally less crime is occurring every year. Got to keep those private prisons filled.
Shoplifting is definitely up (I worked in the industry for 20 years). However, that doesn’t mean the retail giants weren’t using that as leverage. People are always shocked at how often it happens (pretty much constantly all day).
Literally in the comment section of an article showing that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of increased Shoplifting. Unless you’re in the few cities seeing increased shoplifting, we’d need some more information.
The cities with the huge problems regarding shop lifting are in large part to easing up on punishments due to budget problems in the judicial system.
A source would be appreciated. My understanding is that the reasons are still being studied
Data is only going to show who they know about. That’s probably 20% of all actual shoplifting. I had a hard enough time getting my team to report shoplifting when observed due to, “it happens all the time, I don’t have time to report it” or the like. The data is definitely not close to accurate.
But the lack of reporting hasn’t changed, has it? So if the old numbers and new numbers are both underreported, can’t we still compare them and see a decline?
If only 20% is reported, and the reported number is going down, that also means the unreported 80% is going down too. That’s just how fractions and ratios work.
You’re right. Consistency is key. In new york apparently shoplifting reports went from 8 to 20% which could be part of the reason for the increased numbers
Come on you know that has to be false. The stores know how much they ordered and how much of it they sold. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t even know how much to order next time.
The only way they wouldn’t know how much was actually stolen is, if stolen goods are a rounding error of what they throw out day to day. (In which case we have a much more significant problem of Corporate waste on our hands)
People, yes, people still do count audits daily, at least where I worked. They also still do inventory audits regularly yearly/2x year/2x every other year depending on the volume of the store.
Throwing things out does happen but they budget for that daily/weekly/ and so on. Theft is harder to budget for especially when it’s changing. This is mostly what the giants are complaining about when they say theft is to blame for x,y,z.
Well then the data is accurate which one is it now?
You haven’t ever done inventory management I take it. Both are true.
People can’t count all the inventory in a big box store of 40,000 SKUs daily, weekly, or monthly. That’s why they have usually have a yearly, etc inventory as well (and even then it’s not 100% accurate). This is exactly why you can see on the site that they have 2 in stock but when you get there the shelf is empty (let’s assume no one actually bought the item while you were in route).
Last time I ran a garage sale there were a lot of shop lifters, which is insane because I was a broke artist asking for 25¢-2$ for stuff.
I worked in the HQ for one of these big American retailers. All in all, the product and customer experience teams know that customers hate this but execs keep siding with the bean counters over the customer.
If you want to stick it to them, just keep placing online pickup orders. Many places don’t have service fees for pickup, and it forces the retailer to hire employees to run around the store and parking lot.
Retail stores are not designed like an Amazon warehouse. Fulfilling an online order with your own employees is clunky and inefficient. Also, people who buy online tend to make less impulse purchases than when they’re inside of a Target or Walmart.
So, all in all, pick up orders cost the company more, make them less money, and force them to hire back the people they replaced with self checkout machines.
Bean counters = investors represented by the board
Rank and file accountants that often are associated with this term don’t give a shit.
That’s funny because the grocery I work for is pushing hard on online orders. They love it. The only logic I’ve heard so far is that online orders are a “guaranteed sale”, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
They literally tell us to set product aside and not put it on the shelf so we can sell it online instead. They are valuing online shoppers way over in store shoppers.
Eons ago when I was working in retail, pretty much all the training on “shrink” (aka losses, including theft) emphasized that the overwhelming majority of it comes from employees (and not necessarily from employee theft). Things have certainly changed in the post-covid era, but the fundamentals haven’t changed all that much. So, I have been skeptical about some of the retailers’ shoplifting claims.
I was IN loss prevention. Literal store detective.
Did we catch the occasional shoplifter? Yes.
Were they as common or as high dollar value as employees skimming or scamming? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
If you’re in retail, rest assured, those folks are there to catch you more than they’re there to catch shoplifters.
When I worked in retail, anecdotally, it was my understanding that most theft was internal. At Real Canadian Superstore (think Walmart Supercenter, but not Walmart) I saw lots of my coworkers steal all kinds of things. We went through one loss prevention after another, fired for, you guessed it, stealing (ironic, I know). Most of my co workers stole their food for their meal breaks. I very rarely saw or heard of a customer being caught stealing. And no, no one reported others to management.
Gotta fill those slave pits somehow.
Manufacture consent, pass bills that shit on ordinary people and raise the magic economy line. Repeat.
Politically appropriate ways to solve poverty:
- Lower the poverty line so fewer people qualify.
- Make up ever lower and lower bars for incarceration. The incarcerated are not included in poverty statistics.
Prison solves so many problems from a political POV. Work no one wants to do? Incentivize prison labor with commuting sentences. Reagan closed all the mental health facilites instead of making them work for the patients? Detain the mentally unwell during an episode and tell them to stop resisting while you beat them, then charge them with resisting arrest. A close friend of mine is a CO and man the shit I hear straight from his mouth. Fun fact if you know a CO well you will learn things about your state or county that don’t make it to the media. Easiest example I can give is when they rotate high value inmates so they tell you something like “hey we got one of the dudes whose connected to chappo xfered to us for a stay”
I’ve seen it from the inside myself. Truth doesn’t matter when nobody can see it. Those of us who have seen it just keep our heads down because nobody will help and we’re afraid.
It’s tough to fault you for that. I’ve heard how so little that happens there gets reported, I’ve heard about COs group together to throw someone under the bus to hide their actions, or more often inaction. Part of the reason I get along with the CO I mentioned is because he tends to always find himself in some kind of weird opposition to those bad kinds of COs who try to make problems for him just for doing his job as it should be done, as in by the book. I genuinely don’t know where to start when it comes to some of the problems I hear about.
Honestly, by the book is still some awful shit. And yeah, cops will absolutely abuse the genetic fallacy.
At what point do we fight back? I didn’t vote for these corps to lord over me.
They’re trying to build a prison!
For you and me to live in
The percentage of Americans in the prison system, prison system, has
doublednearly tripled since 1985.
Could we push for tougher penalties for things like wage theft, tax evasion, forcing employees to work off the clock, and all the rest of the shit businesses and employers do to fuck over employees? Walk They through the store, out the front door, put them in the back of the cop car and book them, just like the guy that steals a pack of underwear?
The problem is theft for sure, but it’s happening at the top of the payscales in this country, not at the bottom. People getting fucked out of decent paying jobs and a shot at the education it takes to get one. That’s what drives petty crime. Poverty.
No because those at the levers of power are fine with the crimes being done to us.
And/or: …are fine with the crimes being done by them.
What we need is stronger laws about white collar crimes. With mandatory prison assignments so no activist judge can send them to Club Fed.
Yeah when I visit boomer relatives they seem to think retail stores in big cities are war zones- and they vote, which kinda tells me there’s political support to put S.W.A.T. teams in every retail store
Sure, stealing is wrong. But there’s a limit, if you’re operating a store as poorly as Dollar General, stealing from stores that actively take advantage of both the community and the staff is moral. They were receiving so much stuff that the cashier/cleaner/stocker-in-one can’t get them out of the boxes in time for the next shipment, should just be giving those boxes away.
won’t someone think of the shareholders!
/s
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Gotta have the public funded police protecting the corporate wealth!
