| You have it backwards. Saying it's the store's fault is like blaming a victim of rape. Once I chased a thief out to the waiting car, and blocked the door from closing, leaned into the car, and came to my senses... I let them go. It was only worth $750. And I wasn't about to brawl inside a car with two thugs. I could have been stabbed or shot. It's not worth the risk. And I was the store owner. Let me tell you straight up: it's not understaffing. I would expressly tell my staff to not risk their safety for merch. A couple years after I sold the store, they had an armed robbery at closing and lost about a hundred thousand. Also, break-ins went up: they tried cutting the safe out but couldn't reach the rear bolts to cut them. They even stole the security cameras. I only reported once because I knew the guy and I felt betrayed. I don't know for certain, but I think the vast majority of retail theft goes unreported. And your favorite shoplifting fact is down-right offensive. If you were more balanced in your counterargument you'd also ask the reader: What is the cost to the public for added security, staff, deterrence tech, and lost merch? And lost sense of safety and security? Those are priceless in the eyes of most reasonable people. It's sad to think we may have lived through the golden era of retail where stores were relatively safe and pallets of merch could be left out unguarded. These gangs are ruining it for everyone. We shouldn't even have this discussion. We should all unify with retailers of all sizes. Theft is straight up wrong, and the thieves should be punished. |
Sure, and the counterpoint is how much does it cost to provide those services publicly? The cost of catching, prosecuting and jailing the person is almost certainly more than the cost of the goods.
E.g. you chased off someone that stole $750 worth of goods. The average cost to incarcerate someone for a year is $31k. They will have cost the public more than $750 if they spend just 10 days in jail (which they definitely will if they don't post bail). If they spend 30 days in jail, which they could easily do just waiting for trial, it will have cost taxpayers ~$2,550 just to jail them. Add on the costs of hiring prosecutors, judges, public defenders, and more cops to do all the work here, and the public will have spent something like an order of magnitude more than the actual theft.
Theft is wrong, the thieves should be punished, but I don't know that the public spending huge sums to prevent low levels of theft is even worthwhile. The court system is about the most expensive deterrent I can think of.
If I were asked to vote on it, I'm sure not going to opt to spend an order of magnitude more trying to punish thieves. It sucks, but it would cost me less to just pay whatever markup the stores have to charge to cover the loss.