I don’t know the technical legal terms, but two different crimes are being discussed here:
Shoplifting - a “customer” wanders through the store, picks up items, and walks out without paying for them.
Robbery - a thief breaks in and/or out of a store to steal merchandise. Sawzall case. Window breaking case. Etc.
There are very few reasons a chain closes stores. The primary reason is almost always that the store being closed isn’t profitable enough. Whether due to mismanagement, or due to too much competition locally, or due to shoplifting, or anything else.
If the Left were like the Right there would be a bunch of posts on social media claiming a conspiracy where conservatives are organizing shoplifting rings in blue cities to influence the 2024 elections. You know, make law and order an issue.
Note that the increase in shoplifting began roughly coincident with that Jan 6 event at the Capitol. This would be enough “evidence” to qualify as “News” on X and Meta.
Just occurred to me, is it possible that people are being bussed to the southern border by the Grand Old Party?
So many conspiracies, so little time…
I doubt social media is very serious about controlling this stuff. This is how they make their margins.
There are a lot of young white males who feel they too should have power like their granddad. They are SOL these days. Those young boys of high school and college age are ripping off stores at a rapid pace. It is well-known in the industry but politically unpalatable.
It is not like Granddad has not been grumbling about the laziness of these kids or the immorality. Just the old thing about blacks can be blamed and whites can not. Your white kids definitely can not be blamed. That is very strong in our culture.
There was a time where your kid was blamed and the strap came out.
Other statistics show not much of an increase in shoplifting. A survey by the National Retail Federation, the main lobbying group for retailers, show retail theft to be in line with historical trends.
Retail shrink climbed in absolute dollars, but when reported as a percentage of sales as is commonly done, average annual shrink increased to 1.57%, up from 1.44% in 2021. The share is largely in line with past years. Average annual shrink was 1.62% of sales before the pandemic in 2019, though it was as low as 1.33% in 2017, according to previous surveys. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/26/organized-retail-crime-and-theft-not-increasing-much-nrf-study-finds.html
A separate study by the Council on Criminal Justice gives this graph showing the frequency of shoplifting since 2018.
