As retail crime soars, is better tech the answer?
Retail crime has soared by a fifth year-on-year, with retailers now questioning how to deal with extremely high shrinkage amid already-thin margins.
Shoplifting offences rose by 20 per cent to 516,971 offences in December, up from 429,873 offences last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The effect is a whole lot of shrink. Retail losses are up by 33 per cent across all categories compared to pre-Covid levels, according to Deloitte.
Crime cost retailers an eye-watering £4.2bn last year, according to the British Retail Consortium. One in four Brits have witnessed shoplifting.
This includes £2.2bn from shoplifting, and another £1.8bn spent on crime prevention measures such as CCTV, more security personnel, anti-theft devices and body worn cameras.
Calls for action have become stronger as the issues persists.
“Criminals are becoming bolder and more aggressive, and decisive action is needed to put an end to it,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said.
Alan Ring, CEO of body-worn camera company Halos, said: “At a time when retail resources are stretched thin, preventing incidents and improving employee wellbeing should be a top priority… retailers face mounting pressure to find innovative ways to safeguard both staff and stock.”
Is tech the answer?
There are a few ways tech can help with retail crime.
Body-worn cameras, self-checkout monitoring and facial recognition software have all been touted as solutions.
“The current everyday experience is you can shoplift and no one will do anything, because no one will know if you shoplift,” Daniel Gabay, CEO of AI solutions firm Trigo said.
Retail workers are also afraid of abuse if they intervene, although attacks on retail shop workers is set to become a separate criminal offence under the Crime and Policing Bill.
“AI can actually enable you to monitor everyone all the time and give you an alert if there was a mismatch… and do that in a very non biased way.”
“The [theft] numbers are growing… technology companies [can] give a real time dynamic alert to navigate between different customers and non decent and non decent customers,” he added.
But the tech is getting cheaper: the AI camera software Trigo produces primarily relies on already-installed cameras in stores.
There’s a strong argument that tech won’t solve the underlying problem causing retail crime, which is a majority of Brits are struggling with finances and petty crime has become an increasingly normalised solution.
But in lieu of a long-term answer to this issue, retailers may be forced by circumstance into a reliance of tech solutions.