Next time you're in a supermarket,
stand for a moment near the click
ing checkout aisles and consider this : of
every 52 emerging customers, one has
shoplifted something.
Shoplifting is even more prevalent in variety
stores. In department stores, it is so costly that
many won't even discuss it.
Shoplifting, a polite term for stealing, is tak
ing place right now in supermarkets from Maine
to California. One supermarket chain reports
that last year the number of customers taken
into custody for shoplifting totaled 152,000. The
trade magazine Progressive Grocer, after an ex
haustive study, concluded that shoplifting in
food stores came to 260 million dollars in 1960
more than the annual food-sales volume of the
entire city of San Francisco. There is evidence
that this food-store total has now reached at least
280 million dollars. x
An equal amount is stolen from department .
stores, variety chains, discount houses, apparel
shops, drug and hardware stores, all of which
offer higher-priced pickings to "respectable"
thieves. In 1961, Sears Roebuck and Co.'s Eastern
division alone apprehended 2,500 shoplifters.
Alexander's four New York stores caught 5,700 ;
in 1962 the total had risen to 6,500 even before
the Christmas rush started.
The FBI recently revealed that in the first
three quarters of 1962, shopliftings reported to
4,836 police agencies (with jurisdiction over two
thirds of the nation's population) were up 21
percent over the same 1961 period. No one knows
the exact national cost of this type of thievery,
but the best estimate is well over half a billion
dollars, plus huge expense for store protection,
guards, detectives, lawyers, special packaging,
and mechanical equipment. And this total cost
is added, of course, to your bill.
Shoplifting has become so widespread and ex
pensive that in the past eight years 46 states
have enacted laws specifically designed to help
merchants fight it. North Carolina has engaged
a former FBI agent to give antishoplifting in
structions to store managers, clerks, and special
officers.. He reports that North Carolina shop
lifters are taking 15 million dollars' worth of
merchandise a year the state's most costly
crime, far outranking embezzlement, automobile
theft, and holdups of all kinds.
This upsurge in shoplifting is attributed main
ly to three developments:
1. The advent and expansion of self-service
stores. One Minnesota store owner says: "In self
service, we ask our customers to help themselves.
They sure do !" When variety stores began switch
ing to self-service, the managers thought em
ployee thefts would be cut through the reduction
in the number of clerks handling cash registers.
But the decrease of thefts by insiders was more
than offset by the increase of thefts by outsiders.
2. The removal of most barriers between goods
and customers in stores using clerks. Formerly
all merchandise was in showcases or on shelves
behind counters. With open display, shoplifting
became easier. Also, it's believed that success of
many shoplifters in self-service stores emboldens
them to try it elsewhere. An old proverb says:
"Opportunity makes the thief."
3. Improved display techniques psychologically
designed to increase impulse buying. For ex
ample, huge stacks of nylons are more irresist
ible than a single pair they overpower buying
resistance but also have extra appeal to shop
lifters. The manager of one chain says: "We try
to tempt people into buying and at the same time
tempt them into stealing."
Some people contend there is a fourth cause for
increased shoplifting: declining morality. And
there is ample evidence of changed attitudes
among youngsters. Store managers, protection
chiefs, and detectives all report a growing "bold
ness" on the part of teen-age shoplifters. They
are cynical about their thievery, defiant when
'apprehended, rarely show remorse when proved
guilty. One merchant in a high-income suburb
tells me that out of several hundred youngsters
he has caught only one seemed to feel he had
done anything wrong. The others were sorry
they had been caught, not that they had stolen. A
standard reaction is casual assumption that all
can be set right by paying for the goods.
Reactions of parents are equally distressing:
a few bring the child back to the store to apolo
gize, but most parents in this well-to-do com
munity either (a) stop trading at that particular
store or (b) become highly indignant and over
protective, claiming the manager doesn't know
what he's talking about: "Why, Junior goes
around all the time with $5 in his pocket!"
I ax parents are often responsible for juvenile
J shoplifting. A mother will come in with a
three- or four-year-old, see him take a pack of
gum or a candy bar, then neither offer to pay nor
make him put it back. Many parents shrug off the
comic book "borrowed" from a store rack as "a
childish prank." Later, when the child comes
home with a handsome sweater or an expensive
lipstick, the mother casually accepts the explana
tion that "Sue gave it to me."
Few people realize the extent of teen-age shop
lifting. Out of 7,500 confessed shoplifters last
SHOPLIFTING-
The thief isn't an underworld criminal but the respected citizen,
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