In recent years the retail sector has faced an ever-burgeoning threat from crime and anti-social behaviour in many of our towns and cities. Increasingly, the sector’s response has been to seek tactical partnerships at a local level, not only with the police but in union with town and city centre managers, local authorities and community safety teams.
Well over 250 of these so-called ‘crime reduction partnerships’ have produced a great many success stories, with shared information generated by CCTV surveillance and radio link-ups helping to deal with what is a persistent and disruptive band of offenders.
Bill Moyes, the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) director general, takes up the story. “The success of these partnerships relies very much on intelligence information concerning known offenders,” stresses Moyes. “An excellent example of coming together to fight crime can be seen in the work of the Business Information Crime System (BICS).” The BICS is a DTI-sponsored pilot scheme linking 32 towns across the country so that town centre security and safety managers can share crime data on persistent offenders who travel from town to city to town in the hope of avoiding detection.
Moyes states: “Provided that we can make partnerships like this one work in a constructive and cost-effective way, and link all evidence produced by groups across the UK to the BICS’ database, we will really be able to tackle the persistent offenders.”
Moyes adds an important caveat, though, concerning the absolute need for the present Government to tackle the scourge of drug abuse. “The Home Office must focus its attentions on reducing drug dependency among the younger generation, and help these people regain a useful place in society.”
For their part, retailers must always be responsive to those they serve in terms of the range of goods they offer, but they’re also duty-bound to provide a safe and secure environment for customers. They are being ably supported in their endeavours by the Home Office-initiated Retail Crime Reduction Action Team, of course (see panel ‘Combating crime: focusing on the work of the Retail Crime Reduction Action Team’), but how well are they doing in the fight against crime? Perhaps the best indicator is the BRC’s recently-published ‘8th Retail Crime Survey: 2000’, a statistics-packed review of retail crime across the UK.
The 2000 BRC Retail Crime Survey
In what is already being seen as a far more authoritative report than its predecessors, the BRC’s survey puts the total cost of retail crime – including crime prevention – at GB pound 2.044 billion, up from the GB pound 2.015 billion recorded in 1999.
The cost of crime prevention has apparently risen in the Reliance Security-sponsored survey, from GB pound 554 million in 1999 to a whopping GB pound 626 million (with GB pound 323 million being spent on security staff alone). This is tempered somewhat by a GB pound 43 million fall in the value of losses from retail crime to GB pound 1.418 billion. As Bill Moyes says: “If retailers didn’t have to bear the cost of crime, they could look to reduce prices for customers and help bring down inflation.”
This year, the BRC has revised its report methodology and presentation – necessarily so, as the number of retail outlets from which the latest figures have been taken is down from nearly 40,000 to just 17,000 premises. No less than 19,000 Post Office outlets have been removed from the figures, while DTI information that was once forthcoming has been somewhat curtailed. Many would argue that this trimming is beneficial, providing a well-rounded overall picture.
Reductions in crime were recorded for staff theft ( GB pound 112 million), burglary ( GB pound 4.4 million), robbery ( GB pound 650,000) and other ‘unexplained losses’ that totalled GB pound 53.7 million. However, increases have been recorded for customer theft ( GB pound 111 million), arson ( GB pound 940,000), acts of terrorism ( GB pound 1.67 million), till snatches ( GB pound 207,000), fraud ( GB pound 21.8 million) and, as stated, crime prevention ( GB pound 71.8 million).
Tellingly, the BRC survey estimates that retail crime is equal to 0.91% of total retail turnover, costing each and every household the equivalent of GB pound 85 per annum. A good enough reason to fight crime every step of the way.
Customer theft is undoubtedly the key concern for loss prevention managers. The open style of today’s retailing function – together with a greater choice and quality of goods – is all very well, but it does mean that retailers are under ever-increasing pressure to sell more and more products and keep costs in check. Security provision often suffers, and lip service may be paid to defending stock.
A perfect environment for discerning thieves, then, and they appear to have taken advantage. The average number of known incidents of customer theft has increased to 2,260 per 100 outlets in 2000 (1450 per 100 in 1999) – SMT realises that some readers may be confused by this presentation, as the BRC has departed from the previous survey practice of publishing estimates of the total number of incidents of a given type of crime (instead, ratios are provided and expressed as the number of incidents per every 100 outlets).
Sadly, the overall value of goods stolen has also risen – for the second year running – and now stands at GB pound 746 million.
In addition, the number of incidences of theft per 100 outlets rose by nearly 60%, the cost per incident rising by over 20% and the total cost by 18%. Offences of ‘theft from a shop’ recorded by the Home Office rose by 10,000 in 1999-2000, with those convicted by the courts totalling 122,184.
Retailers concerned as much by theft through the back door as opposed to the main entrance will be heartened by the news that the overall value of staff theft declined to GB pound 426 million in 2000, a fall of nearly GB pound 100 million in comparison with 1999. Loss prevention specialists take a bow. That said, according to the BRC survey the average number of known cases increased to just over eight per 1,000 staff members, with the average cost per incident calculated at GB pound 538.
Instances of criminal damage
The thorny problem of criminal damage continues to dog retail security managers. Always been a difficult variable to measure, of course, many of the smaller cases often passing by without being reported. The end result? Unpredictable variations year-on-year.
Last year, small and medium-sized retail outlets again suffered disproportionately – a direct reflection of their location in ‘secondary’ shopping centres, their exposure to higher numbers of anti-social elements and by dint of the goods they vend. For example, smaller food and drink outlets suffered from a risk rate of 55 per 100 outlets in comparison to 46 for the smaller store sector.
The BRC survey suggests that criminal damage cost retailers the not-insubstantial sum of GB pound 4.6 million in 2000 (substantially down on 1999’s figure of just over GB pound 13 million). Excellent news, then. The average value of an ‘incident’ has also fallen (from GB pound 388 to GB pound 255).
Spotlight on retail fraud
The news is not so good on the fraud front. The cost of retail fraud has increased dramatically, rising from GB pound 32 million to GB pound 54 million in 2000.
Retailers are reporting the highest losses on cheques, since cheque guarantee levels have not been subject to change since the early 1980s. Loss prevention managers will know only too well that fraud occurring on a purchase made by cheque which is over the cheque guarantee level is charged back to the retailer.
Thankfully, ever-more sophisticated anti-fraud measures are being looked at when it comes to credit card abuse. Just now, the banking and merchant communities are exploring a change to the UK card infrastructure whereby chip-based cards with a PIN number would have to be presented at the till point as proof of customer verification, doing away with signatures altogether.
In addition, a new address verification system is being introduced to tackle the spectre of ‘card not present’ fraud. This will require a given customer to state their home address when making a purchase by telephone, over the Internet or by means of interactive television. Such information will then be vetted by the retailer, who will check the banking records of the cardholder concerned.
Increasing violence against staff
Retailing, of course, takes place in an open, welcoming environment where members of the public are invited into stores and face-to-face customer contact is vital as a method of boosting sales. Inevitably, when incidents of violence occur they tend to be at close range, and may well be threatening for members of staff (including front line retail security officers). Indeed, preventing customer theft is the most likely cause of violence against staff – accounting for 75% of all reported incidents of aggression in the last year alone.
With regret, the BRC has reported an increase in violence against staff in the retail sector (which stands at 5 per 1,000 staff, or 29 per 100 outlets). This equates with the aforementioned sharp increase in the incidence of customer theft.
Security managers will be interested to learn that this alarming news is indeed tempered somewhat by the recent efforts of town and city centre community partnerships. In Birmingham, for example, it’s been decreed that any member of the public who threatens a member of staff will be dealt with by the courts under the terms of the 1987 Protection From Harassment Act. The BRC is currently monitoring the effect of this initiative to see if it can be applied on a wider scale.
