Middle-class shoplifting is pushing up high street prices, according to Dame Diana Johnson, the policing and crime minister. Can she be right? If my own middle-class acquaintances are anything to go on, the answer is clear: yes.<\/p>\n
\nMany of those pilfering from our shops look just like you and me<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
OK, we know shop theft is on a steep upward trajectory. There are nearly 17,000 incidents every day in corner shops alone, costing \u00a3316 million each year. Shoplifting across the whole retail sector costs billions. The reality is that many of those pilfering from our shops look just like you and me.<\/p>\n
My own experience is that many reasonably well-off people will indeed shoplift, or, if you will, \u2018restaurant-lift\u2019, when the opportunity presents itself. Maybe they don\u2019t go in intending to steal, though some do, but the effect is the same. And, remarkably, it doesn\u2019t trouble their consciences at all, because they invent such great excuses.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an example. I was recently chatting to some friends about whether you should tell supermarket staff if you\u2019ve been under-charged, perhaps as a result of the scanner failing to register something. I\u2019m not a saint, but for me there\u2019s no moral dilemma. You go to someone in uniform, explain and get your credit card out.<\/p>\n
But a few of our number would do no such thing. Their reason? Tesco (or whoever) makes billions, and if they can\u2019t get their technology to work, that\u2019s their problem, and it\u2019s not like they\u2019re going to miss a few quid.<\/p>\n
Hmm. OK. So, what about failing to inform an owner-run restaurant that they\u2019ve under-charged? That too is, in effect, shoplifting, right? Well, apparently, there\u2019s a sound reason for keeping shtum: restaurants often overcharge customers, even if only by accident, so saying nothing is just the customer getting their own back. What goes around, comes around. See?<\/p>\n
If that doesn\u2019t make you see red, how about the disgraceful people who buy an outfit with no intention of keeping it, wear it just once at a party, then take it back for a refund? This kind of fraud is so common there\u2019s a name for it: wardrobing. It costs UK retailers up to \u00a31.5 billion each year, all recouped from us mugs who actually pay for stuff. Yet the perpetrators convince themselves that it\u2019s somehow a victimless crime, or even no crime at all.<\/p>\n
And what about train fare dodging, a close relation of shoplifting? Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has caused a stir recently, shaming the dodgers and showing how it costs Transport for London \u00a3130 million a year, for which the honest punter pays in higher fares.<\/p>\n
But are the criminals always scallywags jumping barriers? Not necessarily. A few years ago, a well-paid computer programmer explained to me how he travelled on the Tube for free. He would start in zone two, displaying his travelcard to staff on the gates, then exit in central London by waving an old zone-one ticket and claiming that the barrier didn\u2019t work. Did he need the cash? No. But he reckoned that if the system had such holes in it, TfL was asking for trouble.<\/p>\n
If you think he\u2019s a one-off, how about those people who won\u2019t tap in and out late in the evening when the barriers are down? Their excuse? The rail companies provide an overpriced service, and it\u2019s only reasonable to get some money back when nobody\u2019s looking. Two wrongs make a right.<\/p>\n
Depressingly, this attitude is becoming increasingly common in Britain. One explanation is that as the country has become more diverse, we\u2019ve lost \u2018social capital\u2019 and a sense of communal obligation. Values we once associated with \u2018respectable people\u2019 aren\u2019t fashionable. Instead, we admire non-conformists and transgressors.<\/p>\n
But even that doesn\u2019t account for the surge in criminality just recently. Lockdown fostered a get-something-for nothing culture. When millions of folk are paid to stay at home, it\u2019s not surprising that some start to think they\u2019re owed not just a living but a few freebies. Especially when they hear that stealing stuff worth less than \u00a3200 is a \u2018summary-only\u2019 offence \u2013 meaning the most likely outcome, even if you\u2019re caught, is a slap on the wrist.<\/p>\n
Too many well-off criminals, with names like Rupert and Olivia, get treated like heroes. They throw paint over priceless paintings, and block the M25, causing untold damage. Yet they are regarded, not as criminals but \u2018campaigners\u2019. How many well-off offenders, as a result, start to believe that their motives for crime must always be pure?<\/p>\n
\u2018Ethics are what you do when nobody else is looking\u2019 is a saying worth living by. It\u2019s a great way of keeping yourself on the straight and narrow. But it doesn\u2019t work with folk who intellectualise their crimes and convince themselves that their behaviour is justifiable. This attitude is one of the reasons, frankly, why our society is going down the pan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Middle-class shoplifting is pushing up high street prices, according to Dame Diana Johnson, the policing and crime minister.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-292409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114917714481568972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}