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Shoplifter Perceptions of Store Environments: An Analysis of how Physical Cues in the Retail Interior Shape Shoplifter Behavior

Shoplifting losses and resulting violence and disruption continue to plague retail stores across the globe. Environmental criminology problem-solving process includes interviewing offenders involved in specific crimes in order to construct and evaluate crime control countermeasures. Using rational choice perspective and situational crime prevention process as theoretical frameworks, the authors applied both content and narrative analyses to interviews with known and admitted shoplifting offenders in order to identify in-store situational (physical) cues for crime prevention planning. Results revealed that over 70% of offender observations fell into four categories: hardened targets, natural surveillance, extended guardianship, and formal surveillance.

Developing, Improving and Evaluating Loss Prevention Initiatives Using Randomized Controlled Trials

The criticality of life safety, significant financial losses and paralysing fear of crime mean private and public crime prevention efforts should be evidence based. And like medicine, law enforcement and security researchers are increasingly using theory-informed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to provide practitioners with rigorous process, impact and cost–benefit evidence.