Women and minors are being trafficked to the UK to shoplift in stores across the country, a retail crime watchdog said.
Girls as young as 12 and 14 were found to be brought to Britain to work for organised crime groups with links to drugs, firearms, and human trafficking.
An Eastern European gang of more than 150 shoplifters has been identified by Retailers Against Crime (RAC), a non-profit partnership committed to preventing retail crime.
The 154-person group is based in Glasgow but has been reported to move across the country to shoplift.
In order to track the gang, RAC partnered with Police Scotland and 1,500 shops in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the north of England.
Members of the gang have been arrested in London, Birmingham, and Darlington. However, this doesn’t stop the cycle of shoplifting, as offenders don’t get imprisoned for long.
New Anti-crime Strategy
Official estimates indicate that there are at least 59,000 people in the UK involved in serious and organised crime. The National Crime Agency said it costs the UK at least £47 billion each year.In order to tackle organised crime on domestic and international level, the government on Wednesday announced a new strategy.
Among other measures, the government vowed to invest a further £5 million to help police fight organised immigration crime, including work by the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime Unit.
Shoplifting Epidemic
The government’s new plan comes amid an epidemic of shoplifting in the UK. According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), between 2021 and 2022, retail crime cost the economy £1.76 billion.The cost of shoplifting amounted to £953 million, while retailers also spent £715 million on crime prevention.
In July, the BRC reported that incidents of theft had increased by 27 percent across 10 of the largest cities in the UK.
“The nature of these crimes has changed, with perpetrators becoming bolder, and many retailers reporting increasing links to organised-crime activity,” the BRC said.
Responding to the rise in retail crime, the Scottish Grocers’ Federation (SGF) called on the Scottish Government to put in place an emergency plan.
“The level of retail crime that is now being experienced by the convenience sector is utterly shocking, and there is virtually no support from our justice system,” said SGF Chief Executive Pete Cheema.
He added that reporting every crime was “meaningless” if the police don’t respond or have the resources to “hunt down perpetrators and convict them.”
The Scottish Government has pledged to invest £1.45 billion in 2023–24 in policing and noted that the overall level of crime was low.
However, the Scottish Conservatives suggested that the approach to justice taken by the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party was “soft” and “effectively decriminalised shoplifting in Scotland.”
‘Zero Tolerance’
The UK government has also been under pressure to tackle shoplifting and protect the retail sector. In October, the Home Office launched the Retail Crime Action Plan, meant to crack down on shoplifters.Police have been tasked with prioritising shoplifting incidents that involve violence against shop workers. Cases where shop security staff detain an offender or where police are needed to secure evidence will also be considered urgent.
Police officers have also been given a green light to match CCTV images of shoplifters against databases of custody images and the passport database.
The measures are part of the government’s “zero-tolerance approach to tackling shoplifting.”
Opposition ministers have, however, argued that Downing Street is failing the retail sector. Labour vowed to end the “£200 threshold rule,” if the party wins the next general election.
In England and Wales, the £200 threshold was introduced in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.
It means that shoplifters taking under £200 worth of goods face a maximum sentence of six months and can plead guilty by post.
Dropping the threshold rule will help tackle shoplifting gangs, Labour said.
