How modern Britain turned into a nation of shoplifters

Theft from shops is at a record high and spans all sections of society. Whatever the reasons, one thing is clear, Zoë Beaty writes - we're all paying the price for other people's crimes

- Zoë Beaty

In South Ruislip, west London, at around 2pm on a grey day in mid-February, a woman walks into Greggs, fills up her bag with sandwiches, and walks out again. A few miles away at a branch of The White Company in north London, a customer is told that there are no candles left because someone just came in and “took them all”. In Boots, across town, a security guard and a queue full of people watch as a man wanders in and fills his bag before ambling out without paying. Meanwhile, a middle-class mum in a Marks and Spencer’s food hall conveniently forgets to scan some top-notch smoked salmon and quail eggs.

“We do it because we enjoy it,” says James*, a 25-year-old student in Nottingham, who has honed his shoplifting skills over many years. In fact, he’s just popped into Tesco to steal a bottle of Fanta, which he promptly produces from his coat pocket.

Across the country, a shoplifting epidemic is well underway. According to the British Retail Consortium, last year the number of offences rose by 3.7 million, to a record high of 20.4 million. Violence and abuse targeted at shop workers rose by 50 per cent, with an average of 2,000 incidents recorded every single day across the country.

Shoplifting has become “brazen” and out of control, experts said in response to the newly published statistics: it’s now costing retailers more than £2.2bn each year. So what has turned us from a “nation of shopkeepers” into a nation of shoplifters? Some of this rising crime can inevitably be attributed to the cost-of-living crisis that is simultaneously squeezing more household budgets below the poverty line than ever before – that baby formula is one of the most frequently shoplifted items in the UK sadly comes as no surprise.