Yesterday I reported a shoplifter in my local Tesco Express.
A steak-out.
The shoplifter was a tall Caucasian man of about 40-50 years, with white hair in a short ponytail, wearing a rugged kind of outfit and carrying a black faux-leather backpack. I’d just entered the store, and it was around 14:30.
The store has rows of refrigerated cabinets off to one side, creating a secluded aisle that faces the frosted glass windows of the building, with the cabinets blocking the view of store staff. As I happened to pass the area, I spotted the shoplifter crouching over an empty shopping basket, rapidly stuffing packs of steaks into his backpack.
It took me a few seconds to register what was happening. From the fact that he was filling the whole bag, and the furtive glances he was taking in case someone spotted him – it became clear to me that he had no intention of paying for the food. At that point I dashed off to the security station at the store’s main entrance. “There’s a guy stuffing steaks into his bag,” I said, and pointed to the aisle where I’d seen him.
The security guard intercepted the shoplifter as he made his way towards the exit. I watched the shoplifter remove a Pot Noodle packet from his coat and leave it in a stack of snack cans when he realised the security guard was going to confront him – presumably hoping he might still talk his way out of it and abscond with the higher-value goods. The guard demanded to see what the shoplifter was hiding under his coat and in his bag. The shoplifter insisted that he was going to pay for the items before leaving the store, but obviously that wasn’t going to fool anyone.
With other store staff on hand, and a small crowd of shoppers forming nearby – one of them filming on his phone – the security guard managed to get the man’s backpack off him and escorted the shoplifter out of the store. The shoplifter must have been a familiar face – it was clear from the way the guard spoke to him that he had been warned not to go into this Tesco before. Afterwards, I got a handshake from the security guard. (What, not even a few Clubcard points for my trouble? Maybe next time I’ll shop at Iceland – at least they give you £1 for reporting a shoplifter…)
Why is shoplifting on the rise?
In England and Wales, the latest available police recorded crime data on shoplifting shows that the number of shoplifting offences was 509,566 in the year ending December 2025, which, although down by 1.3% on the previous year, is still close to the all-time high seen in the 12 months up to March 2025, and up 56% compared with 10 years ago. (During the pandemic, shoplifting offences decreased, but the number of offences has remained elevated at about 40% above pre-pandemic levels.) The British Retail Consortium (BRC), representing over 200 major retailers, runs its own annual Crime Report which estimates the level of crime for the entire retail industry based on surveying a sample of retailers. This results in much higher estimated numbers – 5.5 million incidents of theft in 2025 – indicating that the vast majority of incidents are never reported to police.
The main driver of the increase in shoplifting appears to be organised crime gangs stealing high-value items to order. Other contributing factors include the cost-of-living crisis; the rise in online resale platforms where stolen goods can be offloaded; changes in supermarkets that result in valuable items becoming easier to steal; and a reduced deterrent effect due to gaps in response and enforcement by police in previous years, that’s only now beginning to improve (according to the BRC’s Crime Report 2026).
Shoplifting on the political agenda
The increase in shoplifting has been portrayed, mostly by those on the right of UK politics, as a symptom of increasing lawlessness in modern Britain, with calls for more visible policing and stronger penalties for offenders. The most prominent recent case is that of Walker Smith, a long-standing employee dismissed by Waitrose in April 2026 for confronting a shoplifter. This made headlines as it seemed to many that Waitrose was punishing a diligent and loyal employee for taking sensible action against shoplifting, and in doing so handing shoplifters carte blanche to target Waitrose stores without fear of consequences. Waitrose defended its decision by pointing to the legal and safety risks to shop staff who intervene, and Smith was later offered a job by rival supermarket Iceland (it’s not been reported whether he accepted the role).
Retailers are combating the increase in retail crime by investing in crime prevention measures such as CCTV, security staff and locked cabinets (spending nearly £5.5 billion in the last five years, according to the BRC), and forging closer working relationships with local police forces. Meanwhile, the government has responded to public concern about shoplifting by strengthening the law. The Crime and Policing Bill 2025, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, created a new offence of assaulting a retail worker, and repealed earlier legislation under which the theft of goods valued at £200 or less was treated as a lesser ‘summary offence’. However, this is likely to have only a small impact on shoplifting as a whole – many shoplifters will simply not be deterred by higher penalties against the background of an uneven police response.
What’s needed, in my opinion, is the old mantra of ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ – by which I mean a multifaceted approach that combines more visible enforcement by police against shoplifters and organised crime gangs, with better provision of rehabilitation services for offenders, and wider structural measures to address the minority of shoplifters whose behaviour is motivated by personal histories of trauma, growing up in the care system, addiction, or dire economic circumstances. But that would, of course, be a lot more expensive for the government…
What should individuals do about shoplifting?
I tend to advocate for intervention in cases of bad behaviour by others; this is partly to counteract the well-documented bystander effect that can result in serious crimes going unchallenged – something that has always rankled with me, as a previous victim of hate crimes that could have been solved if witnesses had reported what they saw to the police. And while it’s not worth risking death or serious injury over relatively low-value goods, retail theft does have a real and measurable economic impact on everyone in society: the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) estimated in 2024 that shoplifting added £133 to the cost of the average UK household’s shopping bill. Doing nothing in response to a shoplifting incident merely offloads the costs onto everyone else. I also tend to agree with certain commentators that widespread impunity (or the perception of it) for low-level crimes has a corrosive effect on the social order, and undermines efforts to build a just society.
All the same, it wasn’t as if I felt like a hero for intervening. I simply did what appeared to be the right thing – no more and no less than I would expect anyone else to do on my behalf.
Further reading
Statistics on shoplifting
- Office for National Statistics, April 2026. Crime in England and Wales: Appendix tables. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables. Crime statistics for England and Wales, including the number of recorded shoplifting offences.
- British Retail Consortium, February 2026. BRC Crime Report 2026. https://brc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/operations/2026/ungated/brc-crime-report-2026/. BRC report that covers retail crime, particularly violence and abuse of retail workers and retail theft, and the measures the industry is taking.
Estimation of the impact of shoplifting on household expenditure. The Centre for Retail Research’s figure of shoplifting adding £133 to the average UK household’s shopping bill per year is widely quoted by the BBC and other sources, but I’m unable to find the precise origin of this statistic on the Centre’s website.
As far as I can tell, it appears to be in the right ballpark based on ONS estimates of household expenditure and the proportion of retail sales that the CRR estimates is lost to theft. The calculation for this is as follows. The CRR reported in 2019 that external theft (shoplifting) accounted for 34.6% of shrinkage – the difference between retail sales and the theoretical revenue from the sale of all goods delivered. In turn, shrinkage accounted for 1.42% of total retail sales in the UK in 2019. This means 0.346 x 1.42 = 0.49% of retail sales were lost to shoplifting. From the ONS, total household spend in the financial year ending in March 2024 was £623.30 per week, of which £70.50 was spent on food and non-alcoholic drinks and £38.70 was spent on household goods and services. If we assume these categories approximately cover household retail spend, then households spent £109.2 per week or £5678.40 per year, and 0.49% of this amount would be £27.90.
A second rough estimate can be obtained based on the financial cost of ‘customer theft’ (£408m in the BRC Crime Survey 2026, a known underestimate) divided by the number of households in the UK (about 28.6 million as of 2024), giving an estimate of £14.27 in costs per household per year. These are conservative numbers compared to the CRR figure of £133.
Causes of shoplifting and efforts to combat it
- Cherry Wilson and Jim Connolly, January 2025. Shoplifters ‘out of control’ and becoming more brazen, say retailers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp82jvd3g54o. BBC article discussing the levels and causes of retail theft and violence against retail workers.
- UK Home Office, UK Ministry of Justice, April 2026. Crime and Policing Bill: retail crime factsheet. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/crime-and-policing-bill-2025-factsheets/crime-and-policing-bill-retail-crime-factsheet. Information on the changes to legislation in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 aimed at reducing shoplifting and the abuse of retail workers.
- British Retail Consortium, April 2026. BRC responds to latest ONS crime stats. https://brc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/corporate-affairs/2026/ungated/brc-responds-to-latest-ons-crime-stats/. Press release from the BRC in which Lucy Whing, Crime Policy Adviser, discusses the level of retail crime and welcomes the government’s changes to the law via the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
- Emily Kenway, April 2026. Shoplifters aren’t just bad to the bone or mums stealing nappies. The truth is more complex. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/26/career-shoplifters-motivation-crime. Social policy researcher Emily Kenway discusses her research with homeless ‘career shoplifters’ and the personal background factors that help to explain their motives.
- Graham Farrell, January 2024. What’s the truth behind the ‘shoplifting epidemic’? Six key questions answered. https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/whats-the-truth-behind-the-shoplifting-epidemic-six-key-questions-answered/. Article from PolicingInsight.com which appears to deflect blame for the rise in shoplifting away from policing and onto retailers. For example, the reason given for police not attending low-value shoplifting incidents is “a long history of problem shops draining police resources with repeat calls without taking responsibility for preventing thefts”.
- Nottinghamshire Police, November 2024. How ex-shoplifter helps businesses to reduce crime after rehabilitation with support of police scheme. https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/news/nottinghamshire/news/news/2024/november/how-ex-shoplifter-helps-businesses-to-reduce-crime-after-rehabilitation-with-support-of-police-scheme/. A success story about the rehabilitation of former heroin user and shoplifter James, who now works with Nottinghamshire Police to advise businesses on how to tackle shoplifting.
Political commentary
- Alex Kleiderman, April 2026. Tories urge Waitrose to reinstate worker sacked ‘after tackling shoplifter’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgqk4en5150o. BBC article focusing on the response of the Conservatives and Reform UK to Waitrose dismissing Walker Smith for confronting a shoplifter. It illustrates the portrayal of shoplifting as a sign of a wider breakdown in law and order.
- Graham Bartlett, April 2026. Why doing nothing is only fuelling rise in shoplifting (The Argus). https://policeadvisor.co.uk/why-doing-nothing-is-only-fuelling-rise-in-shoplifting/. Author and police advisor Graham Bartlett recounts incidents of theft from a high street bakery, discusses the Walker Smith case, and advocates for retailers to do more to secure their inventory and deter theft.
- Brandon To, May 2026. Brandon To: When did Britain start siding with shoplifters? https://conservativehome.com/2026/05/05/brandon-to-when-did-britain-start-siding-with-shoplifters/. Recent opinion piece on ConservativeHome.com arguing that, compared to other countries, the UK legal framework discourages bystanders from intervening, citing the cases of Walker Smith and Sean Egan, with adverse consequences for the social order. “If Britain wants to restore a culture of responsibility, it must stand with those who step forward. Because a country that fails to back its heroes will soon find it has none.”