Why shoplifting is soaring across the US — and will only get worse

Retail crime has been rising throughout the US for the past five years, with organized criminal rings targeting stores everywhere from Woonsocket (Rhode Island) to Greensboro (North Carolina) to Grafton (Wisconsin). The National Retail Federation reported that store losses mounted from $453,940 per $1 billion in sales in 2015 to $719,458 in 2020.

The biggest increase over that period happened not during the pandemic but in 2019, when total losses from shoplifting surged to $61 billion, up from $50 billion the previous year. The COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and early 2021 moderated losses, largely because stores were closed or had curtailed operating hours. Now that retailing has resumed, crime has spiked again.

Shoplifting no longer fits its traditional mold as a nonviolent crime perpetrated mostly by teens or substance-abusing adults. Nearly two-thirds of the retailers surveyed by the National Retail Federation said that violence associated with store thefts has risen, led by organized gangs that resell the goods they steal. Like retailers, top law-enforcement officials place some of the blame for the crime surge on a widespread lessening of penalties for shoplifting.

“Without deterrents and accountability, communities will be victimized, and businesses terrorized,” said Laura Cooper, head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

California’s recent headline-making “flash mob” shoplifting sprees have brought widespread attention to Proposition 47 — a 2014 state ballot initiative, supported by a range of left-leaning and libertarian groups, which, among other things, boosted the felony threshold for shoplifting from $450 of merchandise to $950. Soon after it passed, retailers in California began reporting a sharp uptick in retail theft, often in plain view of helpless store personnel and distressed customers.

What has received far less attention, however, is the fact that California’s Prop. 47 was not an outlier among states. In the past 10 years, nearly half of all states have boosted their thresholds for retail felony theft. Thirty-eight states now don’t consider shoplifting a felony unless $1,000 or more of merchandise gets stolen. A 2020 National Retail Federation report on organized retail crime found that two-thirds of retailers in states that had raised their felony shoplifting minimums reported growing retail theft.

The unintended consequences of other government policies have also contributed to the problem, retailers say. Changes to bail laws mean that increasingly, those who engage in misdemeanor property crime — considered a nonviolent offense — are quickly back on the streets, where some go right back to stealing. Mask mandates allow criminals to cover up their faces in stores without attracting attention. Bans on single-use plastic bags have made it acceptable for consumers to walk around stores with their own non-transparent reusable bags, enabling thieves to load up in the aisles and head for the exits.

Retailers and cops are looking for reforms to help stem the thievery. They’d like local governments to amend shoplifting laws so that the aggregate value of a repeat offender’s stolen goods can count toward meeting the threshold for felony charges, rather than simply counting the cost of goods stolen from each incident separately.

Similarly, businesses and security experts want tougher bail for repeat offenders, even if the offenses in question are only misdemeanors, and a federal law targeting interstate shoplifting gangs. Finally, brick-and-mortar retailers want the federal government to crack down on online sites that sell stolen goods. Retailers have lobbied for a federal law requiring online sellers to disclose more information about their operations, though Amazon and other big tech companies have resisted.