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The main conclusions from the study are that the number of thefts from shops rose by a third in a single year with an incident occurring nearly every minute, 24 hours a day - while incidents of violence and abuse against shop staff doubled. The study is interesting and important as it is the first time that the BRC has tried to assess the number of non-reported incidents, an issue which always has been of great concern to UNI Commerce and its affiliated unions.



UNI Commerce finds these conclusions worrying but not surprising as affiliated unions over the years continously have reported increases in numbers of incidents where an employee has been physically and/or verbally abused. UNI Commerce sees the report from BRC as evidence of a general trend which has been reinforced over the last year as the financial crisis turned into an economic crisis.



The report's focus is on shop theft and it lists the value of the accumulated loss to the shop owners for all retail crime in UK shops 2008/2009 to £1.1bn equivalent to 72.000 jobs. Shop owners may find this figure high and may be motivated to increase efforts to combat this development but what makes the figures really interesting is the fact that shop teft is the most frequent cause of incidents as staff is required to prevent shop thieves from leaving the premises. This fact shows that the common perception as shop teft being a "victimless crime" is false and needs to change.



United Kingdom is far from the only country facing the issue of shop teft but thanks to the work of the "Freedom from Fear" Campaign there is a growing awareness of the seriousness of the problem. Globally statistics suggest that on average shop suffer shrinkage of 1.36% of the annual sales with big variations among the countries. India seems to have the greatest problem with a shrinkage of about 2.90% while United Kingdom suffers shrinkage to the tune of 1.34%. The most expensive shrinkage can be found in the US where the shrinkage in 2007 had an estimated value of close to $40.000.000.000 an increase of 2% compared to the previous year.



Learn more from:

http://www.retailresearch.org/theft_barometer/index.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8444808.stm

http://www.brc.org.uk/details04.asp?id=1680