Imagine this:
It's a typical Saturday afternoon, four teenage girls, who are about 15 or 16, are strolling through the mall together. The girls enter a store and browse through shirts, skirts, jackets and pants. After picking out a few items that they each like they go into the dressing rooms and try on their clothes. One girl slips a cute skirt into her bag. The girls walk out of the dressing rooms and after looking for a few more minutes they leave the store.
This isn't an entirely uncommon trend among teens. In fact, according to the National Crime Prevention Council about 25 percent of apprehended shoplifters are teens between the ages of 13 and 17. With more than $10 billion worth of goods stolen from retailers each year, it's become quite a problem.
Not every teen gets away as easily as the girl from the story. But according to the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention, shoplifters say they are caught an average of only once in every 48 times they steal. Even then those who are caught are only turned over to the police about 50 percent of the time. Many stores hire personnel to prevent shoplifting and crime, but sometimes it just seems to go unseen.
But if you are caught, there are consequences. I asked Gary Schwarz, a juvenile probation officer from McLaughlin Youth Center, what the sentences are for first time shoplifting offenders.
“If it's a first time offense and it's a misdemeanor under 500 dollars, the juvenile is not an acknowledged gang member, he's not an extreme mental health case, he's fairly compliant, what we would do is try to send that case to Anchorage Youth Court for appropriate consequences from people their own age. There are two benefits to that, one being that you are getting consequences from hopefully people you understand better than someone my age and equally important you are avoiding formal court and adjudication, which is juvenile language for conviction. If they comply with Anchorage Youth Court they will have no formal criminal record adjudicated in court- nothing to stand in the way of the future.”
Gary mentioned a program called Youth Court. Anchorage Youth Court is a court for youth by youth. Teens with first time minor offenses can choose to go through the youth court system to be sentenced by their peers rather than by the state judicial system. All of the judges and attorneys involved are Anchorage High school students.
Though it may not seem apparent right away shoplifting affects everyone on a daily basis: it increases our costs at stores, and affects our retail experience. [In fact the average American family spends about 300 dollars a year paying for other people's shoplifting.]
Jeff Levin, an employee of a retail store in Anchorage talks about how store customers are really affected.
“For instance, we carry a very popular brand called arcteryx and you know… at one point in time so many of those jackets were being stolen because of the high price that we actually had to stop carrying the jackets for a specific gender because the store couldn't make enough money off the jackets because such a high percent were being stolen. Then we would get customers coming in saying, ‘Oh well why don't you carry it for us if you carry it for the other people?' So it was more of a customer service issue at that point…”
In case you need more proof that shoplifting hurts everyone I sat down with Jeff, Gary, and Sam Holley Kline- a judge from Anchorage Youth Court- and asked them if they believe shoplifting is a victimless crime.
Audio summary: Shoplifting affects everyone because stores have to increase prices and security, and it makes teens look bad and people begin to stereotype us as “shoplifters.” Gary said that 37 billion dollars in retail property was stolen last year, and 7 of every 100 goes to cover stolen goods and security.
Programs such as Youth Court are very effective in deterring shoplifting a second time, because teens are judged by their peers rather than adults. Possibly if more kids were involved with programs like these they would stay out of trouble and deter from stealing again.
Final thoughts: Remember that girl at the beginning who got away with shoplifting? Perhaps if she, and the thousands of teens like her, thought harder about their actions, teens wouldn't have such a bad reputation with retailers…and we'd all suffer fewer consequences from shoplifting.
Teen shoplifting
