Overview
Shoplifting is the act of knowingly obtaining goods from an establishment in which merchandise is displayed for sale, without paying for them. Usually shoplifting involves concealing items on the person of the thief or an accomplice, and leaving the store with them without paying. However, shoplifting is also considered to include price switching, refund fraud, "wardrobing" (returning clothes after they have been worn) and "grazing" (eating your way around a store).
Economists say shoplifting is common because it is a relatively unskilled crime with low entry barriers that can be fitted into a normal lifestyle. People of every nation, race, ethnicity, gender and class shoplift. Originally, analysis of data about apprehended shoplifters and interviews with store security staff suggested that females were almost twice as likely as males to shoplift. However, since 1980 data suggest that boys and men are equally or more likely to shoplift than girls and women. The average person who has shoplifted first did it at the age of ten: shoplifting tends to peak in the mid-teen years and then steadily decline thereafter. People of all races shoplift equally, and poor people shoplift only slightly more than rich people. Men tend to shoplift using knapsacks, and women using strollers. The average apprehended shoplifter is caught with $200 worth of unpaid-for merchandise.
In the United States, shoplifting increases during the Christmas season, and arrest rates increase during spring break.
Rutgers University criminologist Ronald V. Clarke says shoplifters steal "hot products" that are "CRAVED," an acronym he created that stands for "concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable and disposable."
The most commonly shoplifted item used to be cigarettes, until stores started keeping them behind the cash register. Commonly shoplifted items are usually small and easy to hide, such as groceries, especially steak and instant coffee, razor blades and cartridges, small technology items such as iPods, smartphones, USB flash drives, earphones, CDs and DVDs, cosmetics, jewelry, vitamins, pregnancy tests, electric toothbrushes and clothing. In the United States, frequently shoplifted books include ones by authors Charles Bukowski, Jim Thompson, Philip K. Dick, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Georges Bataille, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Italo Calvino, Don DeLillo, Raymond Chandler, Michel Foucault, Dashiell Hammett, Jack Kerouac and other Beat generation writers, Jeanette Winterson, Chuck Palahniuk, Haruki Murakami, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Mark Z. Danielewski. (See Book store shoplifting.)
Shoplifting peaks between three and four in the afternoon, and is lowest from six to seven in the morning.
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