“I enjoy stealing,” explains singer Perry Farrell in “Been Caught Stealing,” Jane’s Addiction’s 1990 ode to shoplifting. “It’s just as simple as that.” But unfortunately for businesses and thieves, little about shoplifting is simple. Is it a crime committed out of desperation, or a disease? How do retailers try to stop it — and how much do they lose? Let’s take a closer look at some misconceptions about the five-finger discount.
Five Myths
A feature from The Post’s Outlook section that dismantles myths, clarifies common misconceptions and makes you think again about what you thought you already knew.
1. Shoplifting began with the rise of the modern shopping mall.
Shoplifting is at least as old as Shakespeare. In 1591, the Bard’s contemporary, playwright Robert Greene, wrote a pamphlet offering advice for shoplifters, including the recommendation that they be “attired in the form of a civil country gentleman.” This peek into the underworld reflected changes in how goods were sold: As the population of London exploded, small shops — milliners, farriers and bakers — devoted to selling one product replaced large, open-air markets where many products were sold together. And the rise of shops meant the birth of shoplifting. People pinched household goods, silver and especially clothes; according to historian J.M. Beattie, in 18th-century London, stealing clothing accounted for 27 percent of theft.
Britons did not look kindly on this crime. Another pamphlet, “The Great Grievance of Traders and Shopkeepers,” written in 1698, noted the “notorious increase” in shoplifting in the second half of the 17th century and demanded more stringent punishment. In 1699, the Shoplifting Act made stealing more than five shillings’ worth of merchandise from a shop a hanging offense.
2. Shoplifting is committed out of need.
People don’t shoplift what they need. They shoplift what they want.
According to the National Retail Federation, the most-shoplifted items in the United States include chewing gum, Advil, the weight-loss drug Alli, cellphones, Claritin, Rogaine, Red Bull energy drinks, Dyson vacuums, Bumble and Bumble hair products, Cover Girl cosmetics, Crest Whitestrips, and deodorant. And Britain’s Global Retail Theft Barometer (GRTB) found that the most-shoplifted items from department stores in 2010 were perfume and face cream. This makes the average shoplifter look less like Jean Valjean — who, in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Miserables,” stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family — and more like an over-caffeinated, pain-pill-popping neat freak obsessed with his or hair, teeth and skin.
A 2008 Columbia University study of more than 40,000 Americans showed that it’s not the least among us doing the most thieving. “Shoplifting . . . was more common among those with higher education and income, suggesting that financial considerations are unlikely to be the main motivator,” the researchers concluded.
3. Most shoplifters are women and teenagers.
Wilhelm Stekel, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, thought that kleptomania was a result of female sexual frustration. In a 1911 essay, “The Sexual Root of Kleptomania,” he wrote of women gravitating toward objects that did not belong to them. According to historian Elaine Abelson, the rise of the department store — a space dominated by women — in the 19th centuryfurthered the idea of shoplifting as crime committed by middle-class Victorian ladies.
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