Shoplifting report shows why retailers are locking up the razor blades

Shoplifting rates in the three largest U.S. cities — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — remain higher than they were before the pandemic, according to a recent report from the nonpartisan research group Council on Criminal Justice.

Since 2020, when viral videos of smash-and-grab robberies flooded social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans have expressed fears that crime is out of control. Polls show that perceptions have improved recently, but a majority of Americans still say crime is worse than in previous years.

“There is this sense of brazenness that people have — they can just walk in and steal stuff. … That hurts the consumer, and it hurts the company,” said Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in an interview.

“That’s just the world we live in,” he said. “We need to get people to realize that you have to obey the law.”

At least eight states — Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New York and Vermont — passed a total of 14 bills in 2024 aimed at tackling retail theft, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The measures range from redefining retail crimes and adjusting penalties to allowing cross-county aggregation of theft charges and protecting retail workers.

Both houses of the Iowa Legislature last March unanimously passed House File 2594, which created the new state crime of organized retail theft — defined as the crime when individuals working together steal retail merchandise and then attempt to sell that merchandise, advertise the stolen merchandise for sale or attempt to return the stolen merchandise for a refund.

Depending on the value of merchandise stolen, the crime would range from a serious misdemeanor to a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine between $1,000 and $10,000.

Legislators said the bill was needed because of an increase in retail theft in Iowa.

In Cedar Rapids, 1,532 cases of shoplifting were reported in the city in 2024, up from 1,238 in 2023 — a 24 percent increase.

Cedar Rapids police encourage retailers who see lots of shoplifting to secure high-value merchandise and to use visible cameras to deter the thefts and make it easier for police to investigate thefts after they happen.

Cedar Rapids police Chief David Dostal said the increase in recorded shoplifting cases could indicate are reporting those thefts more often.

Some businesses, he said, have started encouraging employees — for their own safety — not to make contact with people who are stealing but rather to make sure those individuals are on camera so the store can report the theft to police.

Retailers lock up merchandise

Major retailers have responded to rising theft since 2020 by locking up merchandise, which isn’t popular with shoppers, upgrading security cameras, hiring private security firms and even closing stores. Some chain home improvement stores sell power tools that can’t be activated unless they’re scanned and activated at the register.

A 2022 survey conducted by the National Retail Federation found laundry detergent to be among the most stolen items in organized retail crime, which has contributed to a $94.5 billion inventory shrinkage issue for the retail industry.

Still, the report indicates that shoplifting remains a stubborn problem.

In Chicago, the rate of reported shoplifting incidents remained below pre-pandemic levels throughout 2023 — but surged 46 percent from January to October 2024 compared with the same period a year ago.

Shoplifting in Los Angeles was 87 percent higher in 2023 than in 2019. Police reports of shoplifting from January to October 2024 were lower than in 2023. Los Angeles adopted a new crime reporting system in March 2024, which has likely led to an undercount, according to the report.

In New York, shoplifting rose 48 percent from 2021 to 2022, then dipped slightly last year. Still, the shoplifting rate was 55 percent higher in 2023 than in 2019. This year, the shoplifting rate increased by 3 percent from January to September compared with the same period last year.

While shoplifting rates tend to rise in November and December, which coincides with in-person holiday shopping, data from the Council on Criminal Justice’s sample of 23 U.S. cities shows higher rates in the first half of 2024 compared with 2023.

Researchers found it surprising that rates went up despite retailers doing more to fight shoplifting. Experts say the spike might reflect improved reporting efforts rather than a spike in theft.

“As retailers have been paying more attention to shoplifting, we would not expect the numbers to increase,” said Ernesto Lopez, the report’s author and a senior research specialist with the council. “It makes it a challenge to understand the trends of shoplifting.”

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National problem

Organized retail crime typically involves coordinated efforts by groups to steal items with the intent to resell them for a profit. Commonly targeted goods include high-demand items such as baby formula, laundry detergent and electronics.

The same report found that retailers’ fear of violence associated with theft also is on the rise, with more retailers taking a “hands-off approach.” More than 41 percent of respondents to the organization’s 2023 survey, up from 38 percent in 2022, reported that no employee is authorized to try and stop a shoplifter.

Most commonly shoplifted items

Electronics

Health and beauty products

Food

Baby care supplies

Clothing and accessories

Alcohol and tobacco

Tools, hardware, construction materials

Batteries

Source: National Retail Federation

States enact harsher penalties

Policy experts say shoplifting and organized retail theft can significantly harm critical industries, drive up costs for consumers and reduce sales tax revenue for states. Those worries have driven recent state-level action to boost penalties for shoplifting.

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California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of 10 bills into law in August aimed at addressing retail theft.

The measures make repeated theft convictions a felony, allow aggregation of crimes across multiple counties to be charged as a single felony, and permit police to arrest suspects for retail theft even if the crime wasn’t witnessed directly by an officer.

In September, Newsom signed an additional bill that imposes steeper felony penalties for large-scale theft offenses.

In New Jersey, a bipartisan bill making its way through the Legislature would increase penalties for leading a shoplifting ring and allow extended sentences for repeat offenders.

“This bill is going after a formally organized band of criminals that deliver such destruction to a critical business in our community. We have to act. We have to create a deterrence,” Democratic Assemblymember Joseph Danielsen, one of the bill’s prime sponsors, said in an interview with Stateline.

Maryland legislators considered a similar bill during last year’s legislative session that would have defined organized retail theft and made it a felony. The bill didn’t make it out of committee, but the Maryland Retailers Alliance hopes to reintroduce the bill this year and propose another that would target gift card fraud.

Better reporting needed

Better, more thorough reporting from retailers is essential to understanding shoplifting trends and their full impact, in part because some retail-related crimes, such as gift card fraud, are frequently underreported, according to Lopez, author of the Council on Criminal Justice shoplifting report.

Measuring crime across jurisdictions is notoriously difficult, and the council does not track organized retail theft specifically because law enforcement typically doesn’t identify it as such at the time of arrest — if an arrest even occurs — requiring further investigation, Lopez said.

The council’s latest report found conflicting trends in the FBI’s national crime reporting systems.

The FBI’s older system, the Summary Reporting System, known as SRS, suggests that reported shoplifting hadn’t gone up through 2023, remaining on par with 2019 levels. In contrast, the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, shows a 93 percent increase in shoplifting over the same period.

The discrepancy may stem from the type of law enforcement agencies that have adopted the latter system, Lopez said. Some of those communities may have higher levels of shoplifting or other types of property crime, which could be what is driving the spike, Lopez said.

Despite the discrepancies and varying levels of shoplifting across the country, Lopez said, it’s important for retailers to report these incidents, as doing so could help allocate law enforcement resources more effectively.

“All law enforcement agencies have limited resources,” he said, “and having the most accurate information allows for not just better policy, but also better implementation — better use of strategic resources.”

Gazette reporter Emily Andersen contributed to this report.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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