Page 16 - SyI Quarterly - Q3 and Q4 Edition 2023

Know your Institute
Know your Institute

Dealing with Retail Crime

By Carl Dakin CSyP FSyI - Director

As the sponsoring Director for the Frontline Operative Special
Interest Group (FLOSIG), I wanted to use this opportunity to discuss
a topic that is relevant to those working at the ‘frontline’ of security,
as well as those at a senior leadership level. The public and retailer
perception is that retail crime is on the rise and according to the
British Retail Consortium (BRC) Crime Survey (2023) ‘incidents,
including racial and sexual abuse, physical assault, and threats
with weapons, increased from the pre-COVID-19 high of over 450
per day in 2019/20, to over 850 per day in 2021/22’. The casual
observer could be forgiven for thinking retail crime relates to theft
– though theft is a significant problem with £953m lost to customer
theft in 2021/22. In addition, the range of crimes highlighted in the
BRC report demonstrates a much wider problem.
Drawing on unpublished data from one of my clients that operates a large retail centre, the current
trend indicates more crime occurring from mid-afternoon until closing time. Although the reason
behind this trend is unclear it does enable retailers to risk manage their units and use available
resources to target specific times of the day. This is much the same way many hospital emergency
departments will deploy security officers during the evening and at the weekend.

There has been much criticism of the police and government for failing to investigate low-level
crime and following a recent statement by the Home Secretary that ‘police must investigate every
theft and follow all reasonable leads to catch offenders’ has been met with scepticism from many
retailers. However, it can be argued that the police response is only part of the matter and the
deterrence and immediate response on the ground are as important as the police and the justice
system to play their respective parts. Indeed, there is plenty of information available that indicates
a less than effective response by some Security Officers deployed to retail units and the absence
of a zero-tolerance or a ‘don’t stop’ policy by the retailer undermines any appetite to resolve the
problem.

So where to start? There is very little point in deploying security staff to a retail unit unless the
retailer has the appetite to pursue the offender through the courts, and the Security Officers are
suitably trained and resourced to provide genuine deterrence. That means a lone Security Officer
might not be sufficiently trained to deal with multiple offenders at the same time and so they quickly
become overwhelmed – mob tactics and other factors can quickly make the working environment
unsafe, and the Security Officer will be unable to maintain an effective response. In many cases
it might be more appropriate to deploy more than one Security Officer – which is where the
Operational Requirements (OR) process comes into play, but perhaps a topic for another day.

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