Meeting the challenge of organized retail crime – NRF News

Organized retail crime costs retailers $700,000 for every $1 billion in sales, on average, according to NRFs 2021 National Retail Security Survey, and 57 percent of respondents indicated a rise in ORC during the previous year.

These are not victimless crimes; they jeopardize employee and customer safety and disrupt store operations.Theyre also not non-violent customers, employees and community members are traumatized by these incidents. News headlines around smash and grab thefts at national retailers in major cities show that organized retail crime continues to be a serious problem. ORC continues to be a gateway crime to more serious crimes and often has ties to transnational crime rings.

And its not a new problem: NRF surveys show that organized retail theft has been a growing problem over the past five years. The brazen, targeted and coordinated activity occurs in communities across the United States.

Over the past eight years, several states have worked to keep non-violent criminals, or those with minor misdemeanor offenses, out of the U.S. criminal justice system. Diversion programs and other job and economic development programs encourage these individuals to become productive members of society.

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States have also changed laws regarding the amount of bail assessed to minor offenses, increased felony theft thresholds and worked to remove non-violent offenders from the prison system in the hopes they do not become career criminals or fall into a life of more violent crime.

Some district attorneys, law enforcement officers and state legislators even communicated that they would no longer be tough on non-violent, victimless or seemingly minor offenses. In an effort to help locales meet criminal justice reform goals and free resources to go after more violent and serious offenders, those apprehended were often quickly released due to the non-violent and unimportant nature of these property crimes.

The result is that criminals can recruit people to steal inexpensive items in great quantities with no fear of retribution or prosecution.

Incidents of organized retail crime were rising before 2020, but the pandemic upended peoples lives in countless ways. Many lost their jobs. Communities restructured how we lived, shopped and worked. Retailers raced to safely stay open and serve customers by increasing innovations like delivery, curbside fulfilment and buy online, pick up in store. Customers flocked to these convenient and safe ways to shop, wearing face coverings as required in stores and shopping centers.

Unfortunately, these innovations also attracted enterprising criminals looking to exploit gaps in security and take advantage of opportunities to quickly resell merchandise online, on street corners, in black markets and even back to the retail supply chains and stores they stole from. Criminals organized flash mobs or smash-and-grab incidents through social media and apps, which spawned more copycat incidents.

A perfect storm for organized retail crime emerged and the results of that storm are being captured on mobile devices and shared via social media and news stories across the country.

While ORCs financial impact is considerable, the impact on employee and customer safety is even more important. These crimes not only affect retailers bottom lines with asset loss and store operation disruptions; they have become increasingly violent jeopardizing the safety of employees and customers.

The costs for security budgets for retailers have grown significantly in recent years partly due to these retail crimes. Retailers continue to revisit their policies and shift strategies to fight and prevent ORC-related incidents. NRF supports their efforts through advocacy and opportunities to convene the retail industrys leading professionals in loss prevention, asset protection and cybersecurity.

NRF encourages states to update the definition of organized retail crime with sufficiently serious criminal penalties. States should act to define the crime of "organized retail theft" in criminal law to specify those thefts involving two or more participants, an intention of resale, and include increased penalties for those specific violations.

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Meeting the challenge of organized retail crime - NRF News