Statistics, targets and aspirations
Further commentary on shoplifting, crime and performance
Last month I did four interviews about shoplifting with local and regional press, following the launch of my Retail Crime Board. In each I was asked variations of, “what is behind the increase?”
The data will tell you some of the story, but not all of it. In the last twelve months, Kent Police recorded 15,557 incidents of shoplifting, a 10% increase on the year before1.
That is but a fraction of the true picture, unfortunately. Like some crimes, not every incident is reported to the Police. Last weekend, I witnessed a shoplifting which I reported to both the shop and the Police. However, had I not done so, it is likely it would not have been reported to Kent Police, because it is dealt with internally by the company2.
The Association of Convenience Stores estimated that retailers recorded an astonishing 5.6million incidents of shop theft last year3. As a basic estimate, assuming that 2.5% of incidents took place in Kent, there were as many as 140,000 incidents in the last year. To put that into context, Kent Police recorded 125,454 victim-based crimes last year, excluding shoplifting.
You could therefore argue that 88.9% of shoplifting is still not recorded.
So one of the reasons for the rise in recorded offences could be retailers reporting more, but not all, to Kent Police. Evidence suggests that there is physically more shop theft occurring too, linked predominantly to drug and alcohol addiction, organised crime and opportunism4.
One of my arguments has been that I want more reported and therefore crime statistics go up - because Kent Police can identify repeat offenders, build better intelligence and bring more to justice.
It is a feature of crime statistics that they will rise and fall based on reporting; it has been said before that crime recorded by the Police is more a record of police activity than of crime itself. And to some extent that is correct, because offences relating to drug or weapon possession could fluctuate based on how much proactive work Officers and Staff can do.
When I’ve been asked when the numbers will come back down again - there is no reliable forecast that will predict whether they will go up or down.
Crime numbers have been a point of debate over the last ten years. The amount of crime that Police Forces have been recording has increased since HMICFRS, the inspectorate of Policing, started looking into this in depth. It has resulted in significant improvements in accuracy; for example, in 2017 they found that Kent Police was only recording 83% of crimes correctly. That figure is now nearer 97%. That means a greater number of offences being added to the books.
When you create a new offence, you can also see extra crimes being recorded that perhaps were not before. Therefore recorded crime is helpful for showing trends and activity, even if it makes it hard to make longer term comparisons of crime rates (for example, in Kent between 2017 and 2024).
It is why the Office of National Statistics’ Crime Survey of England and Wales is considered the better measure overall.
There is a risk of relying on recorded crime metrics that will not give you a complete picture of the situation. A force being more proactive on stop and search will generate more detections. Victim confidence improving will lead to more reports, that might not otherwise have been made. New laws will add new offences.
So how could we measure a reduction in shoplifting? We can look to the great work of the Association of Convenience Stores to monitor the trends of their members, and I will be asking retailers to share more of their internal data to help aid comparison.
They real key is to be honest and transparent, and not make promises that cannot be delivered via one measure alone, or without real partnership working.
Rolling year to August 2024: 15,557. Rolling year to August 2023: 14,146. Source: Kent Police
For clarity, Kent Police did follow it up.
Association of Convenience Stores (2024), Crime Report 2024. https://www.acs.org.uk/research/crime-report-2024#:~:text=The%20UK%E2%80%99s%20local%20shops%20recorded%20a%20shocking%205.6million%20incidents%20of Accessed 26 September 2024
See above.