Shoplifting: A Hard Habit to Break

Shoplifting: A Hard Habit to Break

Erik* walks up to me outside of the Diesel store on Newbury Street.

“I needed new jeans,” he said.

A little further away from the store he shows me the pants that cost about $150 in he store, he shoplifted or as he says "scooped" two pairs. Inside the bag with the pants are a few shirts and the shoes he is wearing he tells me he switched with shoes he had on.

Erik is 22, he does it because he says he is feeding an addiction. His name has been changed for anonymity.

“No drugs, I don’t drink, I’m in shape, but every day if I come home after work without something I have to go back out and get it,” he said. “I take things because I can’t stop,” he says.

“A lot of it I end up giving away because I move a lot and I don’t need it.” Erik has lived in Boston, Washington, California, Georgia, and Florida in the last year. He’s either touring with bands or just traveling.

“Right now I have a shopping list for over $300 in Banana Republic,” said Erik. “I get stuff for other people and they give me half of what it costs, I really don’t even need a real job.”

According to the National Retail Security Survey and reported on retailindustry.com “total inventory shrinkage cost U.S. retailers $32.3 billion last year, up from $29 billion the year before.” $10 billion of this was attributed to shoplifting.

“Most of my friends shoplift or at least they have in the past,” said Erik. “Some people ‘work for eBay’, they steal expensive things that are really random from a lot of stores. Like my friend Matt takes these boxes of drawing pens that are worth either $60 or $200 and sold them on eBay. Almost every state he’s lived in has made the transition of having them out in normal art stores to underneath Ple...

... middle of paper ...

...op when she wants to.

Erik has not been caught, but he knows the consequences of shoplifting.

“You can go to jail for a long time if they want to put you away that bad, it’s also a federal offense so every time I’d apply for a job I’d have to say what I did.” Erik already has many misdemeanor charges in various states due to fighting. “I want to stop [shoplifting] but I can’t, most people don’t though, want to stop.”

Although Jason Lane said most of the thefts are found out later on surveillance cameras retailindustry.com quotes Hayes, president of Loss Prevention Specialists, as saying that “technology is critical to maintaining low loss levels.” In their article he said, “Because shoplifters are largely targeting small, highly desirable merchandise, these retailers have increasingly turned to electronic article surveillance devices to protect their merchandise.”