The Steal (30 page)

The opening of supermarkets, hypermarkets, and luxury shopping malls and districts worldwide has made shoplifting more visible and forced modern psychological, legal, and retail remedies to collide with corporeal solutions from ancient cultures. In Singapore, where the crime can result in a seven-year prison sentence, some shoplifters still seek spirit doctors to exorcize the stealing demon. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where, according to common wisdom, shoplifting has historically been low, luxury malls have begun to hire Western-style loss prevention teams and secret shoppers as well as to install state-of-the-art camera systems and tags. If the dollar amount of the shoplifted items is high enough, residents are jailed, while nonresidents have their photos posted in stores and are deported. In a throwback to the eighteenth century, when female shoplifters used skirts as props, on Zamzama Boulevard, Karachi’s main shopping district, teams of burka-wearing boosters hit jewelry stores. Back in 2005, these thieves, who sewed deep pockets in their garments, were so prevalent that jewelers in one Indian city tried to ban burkas. Officials, fearing ethnic strife, declined to do so.

According to Amnesty International, chopping off a thief’s hand endures in parts of the Arab world, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia. When the Somalian al-Shabab militia amputated the right hand and the left foot of four alleged thieves in 2009, hundreds of people attended the event. But severing is not always dispensed for shoplifting. Sometimes Sharia courts rule that being turned away from heaven will suffice as a punishment.

How to punish shoplifting will always be in question. There are those who believe that, in our unstable economy, given the large thefts of white-collar thugs and high-profile con artists, and the increasing gap between the superrich and everyone else, shoplifting need only be considered in the category of moral turpitude and disciplined with community service. Others think that harsh punishment is our only chance of deterring shoplifters. However it is sentenced, shoplifting can flash up anywhere, not just in the headlines but in front of us when we least expect it.

Walking down the street in New York on a hot summer afternoon last year, I passed one of the fruit carts that stand on nearly every corner. The vendor, a slight, bald man in his forties, rested under an umbrella. The cart was piled high with avocados, pineapples, mangoes, bananas, and plastic shell boxes of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. The man sold different brands than the grocery store or bodega, but everything cost half the price. There were no antishoplifting devices.

School had just let out for the year. A gang of kids, eight or nine of them, maybe in junior high, jogged up behind me in a loose pack, the smallest one at the back. They passed me, and as they passed the fruit vendor, several of them grabbed fistfuls of bananas and cherries, as if they were sampling fruit in a store. They kept jogging, screaming and laughing, eating the fruit. One of the leaders, a big girl in a white T-shirt, clutched a sprig of cherries above her head in victory. The fruit vendor began screaming. He took a few menacing steps after the kids. He would call the police. He raised his fist. He would file a police report. The gang didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe they knew his threats were empty. And when the vendor closed the distance—it didn’t take more than a few large steps—instead of continuing down the block, they stopped, turned around, and began throwing chunks of the half-eaten bananas and the cherries at him. A woman walking by got caught in the fruit volley, smacked in the cheek with some cherry flesh. She only muttered a curse of disapproval and, wiping it off, kept walking.

Suddenly tiring of their game, the kids stopped throwing the fruit. They started jogging down the street again. I passed them a half block down. They were gathered around a fire hydrant, eating what fruit they had not thrown at the vendor, spitting out the pits, tossing the brownyellow peels on the sidewalk, and laughing.

 

 

There is no single reason for shoplifting’s rise. In our world, where greed and consumerism are encouraged, where social and economic inequality are swelling, and where rogues like Robin Hood are admired, the crime will continue to grow. But a serious study of shoplifting should not be content to bemoan the crime’s ubiquity; it should observe that every time you walk into a store, the cost of the crime is reflected in the artillery of antishoplifting devices around you as well as the elevated prices of the items you’re buying. Consumers are now suspects. And, indeed, a looming issue for the retail industry is transparency. Maybe in the future stores will make public the details of how they deal with shoplifters just as governments are publishing their secrets. But thus far, no Julian Assange has appeared to reveal the secrets of Bergdorf’s, Loehmann’s, and everything in between. That is not even taking into account the cost of shoplifting in human and social terms. To accept the crime as an immutable part of the global landscape means to accept that we can’t always predict who is shoplifting. It is to accept that trying to get something for nothing is considered by many people the best way to survive—even flourish. Yet if we know we can never eradicate the crime, we can try to take a hard look at the costs. An investigation of where shoplifting came from and why people do it exposes important truths about our markets, our courtrooms, and our identities. It reminds us of the secrets that shoplifters and stores want to hide.

I would like to thank my admirable agent, Lynn Nesbit, for taking a chance on this project and for her enduring support. Ann Godoff offered encouragement, tough-minded notes, and terrific lunches; I am especially grateful to Jack Beatty for his wisdom and patience, his thoughtful, rigorous editing, and his sense of humor. At Penguin, Lindsay Whalen was always on point. Jeanette Gingold brilliantly copyedited. Karen Abbott, Dick Babcock, Sebastian Currier, Gioia Diliberto, David Hirshey, Mary Beth Hughes, Dennis Hutchinson, Brendan McNally, Carlos Murillo, Jonathan Santlofer, Philip Weiss, Rishona Zimring, and Thad Ziolkowski were among those who kindly read drafts, sections of drafts, and provided hand-holding, ears, and other types of advice and sustenance that one needs while writing a book. In New York, Tarik O’Regan and Suki Kim, David Nasaw and Dinitia Smith, and Rob Bourne helped me with housing over the years, and Una Chaudhuri made available access to the Bobst Library, contact information of Sharia scholars, and anecdotes about the UAE. James Piecowye, the host of
Nightline DubaiEye,
sent me a podcast of a show that ran about shoplifting there. Simona Levi answered questions in Barcelona. Elise Slobodin and Catherine Scheinman made contacts in their fields available, and Michael Kinghorn translated the story of one Brazilian shoplifter in Minneapolis. Thanks to Terence Dixon. Thanks to David Margolick for advising with legal and journalistic issues and agreeing to help on a number of occasions. Celia Lowenstein opened her Rolodex. Lee Froehlich offered various contacts and eyewitness accounts. Stephen Hacker and Michelle Turner supplied local history and gourmet dinners in Louisville. All of my assistants deserve Purple Hearts for helping me tackle obscure research problems and for facing down the mountain of papers involved in writing this book. But Liza Lichtenfeld stands out. Also thanks to Bonnie Litowitz for helping the project along from the beginning.

I owe an unpayback-able debt to Elaina Richardson, the corporation of Yaddo, and the people who make it work for their generosity during the writing of this book. David Plotz and Meghan O’Rourke at
Slate
, Toby Manhire at the
Guardian
, and Nick Goldberg at the
Los Angeles Times
published my earliest writings about shoplifting. Thanks to KGB Literary Reading Series and Suzanne Schneider for letting me read from the manuscript. Many librarians helped me track down obscure sources, including Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Allen Fisher at the National Archives, and the staff at the University of Chicago interlibrary loan department. But no one was as cheerful and responsive as Heather Jagman at DePaul University. Joe LaRocca, King Rogers, David Hill, Gail Caputo, the staff at the FMI, the staff at the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention, Jeanine Arnold at the Uniform Crime Research division of the FBI, Evan Schuman and his blog, StorefrontBacktalk, the people at Theft Talk in Portland, Richard Hollinger, and the other criminologists and scholars, loss prevention agents, physicians, and employees of antishoplifting technology organizations too numerous to name here who generously answered my questions. There are many people I interviewed whose stories in the end did not appear in this book. I would like to thank them. I would also like to thank the people whose stories I did use, especially those who allowed their real names to be used. Finally, Dean Corrin and John Culbert, the associate dean and dean of the Theatre School of DePaul University, gave me academic leaves and other forms of assistance in 2005–6, 2008–9, and 2010.

A word on how I wrote this book: People remained anonymous who wished to. Anyone whose first name I use without a surname is a pseudonym. The names of the people I describe in the groups are pseudonyms. I did not alter details, conflate scenes, or use composites, and I fact-checked everything I could, doing multiple interviews, using police reports, court documents, and the Freedom of Information Act. This book describes shoplifting’s past, so historical and court records, scholarly articles, newspaper clippings, transcripts of TV shows, and rare books and manuscripts archives such as the Wellcome Library in London, the British Library, and the Hampshire Archives were part of my research as well. Loss prevention agents at the National Retail Federation, theft addicts at their conferences, and engineers at Sensormatic explained how antitheft devices operate. I went to stores and saw how things worked behind the scenes. I listened.

p. 5
over a million shoplifting offenses:
United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (September 2009).
Crime in the United States, 2008
, table 7.

p. 5
more than “the losses . . . ”:
quoted in Richard C. Hollinger and Amanda Adams,
2009 National Retail Security Survey
, Security Research Project (NRSS), Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida, Gainesville, 2009, 9.

p. 5
800, 000 people were arrested:
Ibid., table 30. This is a commonly cited figure. See also United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Crime in the United States
, 2008.

p. 6
Stores do not always keep good records:
To cite just one example of the complexities of record-keeping, in 2006, in a widely publicized shift from its well-known zero-tolerance position on shoplifting, Walmart decided it would only detain adults (not kids or senior citizens) who stole items valued at more than $25.

p. 6
more than 150 percent:
New York Times
, March 15, 1970, 234.

p. 6
Between 2000 and 2004:
Uniform Crime Reports 2004, figure 2.13.

p. 6
also climbed slightly:
Uniform Crime Reports 2008, table 7.

p. 6
In 2008, shoplifting rose:
United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Supplement to Return A Record Cards limited to Group 1 & Group 2 Cities, 2008.

p. 6
In 2009:
Uniform Crime Reports, table 23.

p. 6
According to the National:
NASP internal report. Research since the 1970s settles on a similar number.

p. 6
But a massive study:
C. Blanco, et al., “Prevalence and Correlates of Shoplifting in the United States: Results from the
National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC),
”
American Journal of Psychiatry
, 2008, table 1, 906. Thanks to Carlos Blanco for explaining this data.

p. 6
10 percent:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

p. 6
one in forty-eight times:
NASP internal report. Other research supports this finding. In a 2009 survey, for example, British retailers estimated that only half of all shoplifting losses are identified.

p. 7
“More Consumers, Workers Shoplift . . .”
USA Today,
June 19, 2008, B1.

p. 7
between 0 and 8 percent:
McElroy, “Kleptomania, A Report of 20 Cases,” 652.
DSM IV Text Revision
puts the percentage of kleptomaniacs “at fewer than 5 percent.” However, the
DSM IV Sourcebook
admits that where kleptomania was concerned, there is not “a consistent method of documenting phenomenology and diagnostic criteria” (p. 1015). Some forensic psychiatrists, like Will Cupchik, think it’s lower. Some psychopharmacologists, like Jon Grant, suggest that it could be higher. Since the
DSM
definition of kleptomania has changed over time, and many physicians believe it is fuzzy
and
the disease is underrepresented, it is hard to say how many kleptomaniacs exist. Harvey Roy Greenberg—a psychiatrist to whom the American Psychiatric Association refers journalists who have questions about kleptomania—“does not count” himself an expert in the subject and could only say that the kleptomaniacs he had treated were “horribly troubled” (December 6, 2007).

p. 8
$11.69 billion:
NRSS, 2009, 8, 9.

p. 8
“crime tax”:
Richard Hollinger provided me with this statistic, which appeared in
Consumer Reports
. A 2010 study by the Centre for Retail Research found that the “crime tax” in the UK is 180 pounds per family per year.

p. 8
1.44 percent:
NRSS, 5.