Opinion
The price of shoplifting is getting dangerously high
Target is among many retailers warning of a rise in organised theft, including ‘flash robs’ of young thieves threatening staff, and others brazenly exiting with big bags filled with booty.
John GapperContributorWhen young, the writer Susan Sontag used to frequent the Pickwick bookstore in Los Angeles and shoplift works of literature. “Each of my occasional thefts cost me weeks of self-revilement and dread of future humiliation, but what could I do, given my puny allowance?” she later wrote.
That made her a snitch, in the definition laid out in a classic study of retail theft in a Chicago department store in the 1960s. Snitches were amateurs, mostly women who would pilfer purses and accessories from the beautiful displays. Then there were boosters, a much smaller number of professional thieves who were systematic and ruthless.
Financial Times
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