Deterring Juvenile Criminal Activity

Deterring Juvenile Criminal Activity

Arresting juvenile shoplifters can help deter future criminal activity.

Despite millions of dollars spent by retailers each year on surveillance and enforcement devices to deter theft, shoplifting continues to be a major crime problem.

Store security personnel detect as many as two million shoplifting cases per year, but many are not reported to the police. And of the almost 400,000 shoplifters detained and turned over to the police annually, the vast majority are not arrested partly because shoplifters often are not tried and sentenced.

A store's shoplifting policy is influenced largely by the cost of following an arrest through prosecution. Many stores are wary about the civil liability consequences of detaining but not fully prosecuting a shoplifter. Some companies feel that simply handcuffing, detaining, and questioning suspects is enough to deter shoplifters. Others have full arrest policies. But very little has been known about what works to deter shoplifting and what doesn't.

THE EXPERIMENT

In 1983, with funding from the National Institute of Justice, the Police Foundation undertook a study to determine whether arrest can indeed deter shoplifting. Working with a major department store chain in a large U.S. city,* the foundation examined almost 1600 shoplifting cases in nine of the chain's largest stores.

Shoplifters apprehended by the store were randomly assigned to two groups:

those caught by store security personnel and turned over to the police for arrest; and

those caught by store security personnel but released from the store without arrest.

Each case was then followed for six months to determine what effect arrest or release had on subsequent criminal beh...

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...selectively. Stores in jurisdictions where adult shoplifters are treated leniently might consider imposing their own in-store procedures rigorously within the law (detention, handcuffing, questioning, etc.) rather than arresting suspects.

In fact, the company in this study used these findings to adopt a selective arrest policy for shoplifting. It believes this policy has helped cut its shoplifting rate by over 10 percent with subsequent savings more than covering the $200,000 cost of the study.

The security profession clearly needs more information on official law enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing policies for shoplifting. In addition, more research is needed on how different classes of shoplifters respond to different sanctions. The costs associated with shoplifting are high and continue to rise. In the end, customers and retailers alike pay the price.