FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON – “Anarchy in the UK”, as the Sex Pistols sang: the prophecy has come true in the sense that it is now free shoplifting, a veritable “epidemic of shoplifting”, as it is defined , which costs the British economy over a billion a year.
The data just published by the National Statistics Office is impressive: last year, a thousand cases of shoplifting were recorded every day, an increase of 25 percent compared to the previous year. But in reality, this is just the (small) tip of the iceberg, because according to retailer associations, the number of shoplifters would now reach 8 million per year.
What’s worse is that these small crimes are effectively decriminalized: anyone who takes items worth less than £200 only risks a £70 fine. Police no longer even respond to calls and in fact only 18% of shoplifting cases are solved, a significant decrease from 46% in 2016 when accounting for these thefts began. The proportion of shoplifters actually accused has also fallen from 30 to 14%.
“It seems that these criminals can just come in and take whatever they want and do whatever they want,” denounced the manager of a supermarket. It’s not about one or two things: They come with bags and sacks and take everything with them, coffee, meat, detergent, wine, everything that can be resold.” Because, as a nationwide cooperative leader complains, they are “organized Looting is often the work of gangs who then resell the stolen goods online, but also in bars and discos.
All this amounts to imposing a tax on the general public: in addition to the billion in stolen goods, there is also the 700 million that shopkeepers spend per year on security measures, a sum that represents an additional 6 cents for each transaction. Shopkeepers try to take cover by having salespeople wear cameras or sealing even small things like cosmetics, or even hiring private guards who can immediately catch and detain shoplifters while they wait for the police: The problem, however, is that the agents then they don’t arrive and we have to let the little criminals go.
The scale of the phenomenon became clear in all its severity in August, when hundreds of children memorialized on TikTok attacked and looted a sports store on Oxford Street with impunity.
There are voices that say that this plight, which has become even worse after Covid, is due to the rapid increase in the cost of living and the consequent descent of a large part of the population into poverty, but there is also a feeling of insecurity and the breakdown of the social fabric that is becoming ever more pervasive in Britain.