Samantha Motion: What's behind the rise in shoplifting?

If this is how you imagine a typical shoplifter, you're wrong. Photo / Getty

OPINION

When I picture a typical shoplifter, I imagine a teenage girl slipping a pink lippy into her pocket as she wafts through Farmers in a cloud of the tester perfume from some fading celeb.

Maybe she's stealing because she can't afford the things she thinks she needs to fit in, maybe she's looking for a risky thrill.

It's an image straight out of an American teen movie, but new prosecution figures for Tauranga and Rotorua between 2017 and 2020, however, show it couldn't be further from accurate in our region.

For one, men are more prolific than women - or at least more often caught.

In the Western Bay, the most likely age of an offender was between 25 and 29, while in Rotorua it was people in early 30s.

Retail premises are the most common targets - not too surprising given the breadth of shops that category could encompass - but petrol stations and pharmacies are also increasingly targeted.

Prosecution rates are at a five year high in both growing cities.

It's difficult to know whether this is mostly driven by an increase in offending or improvements in the ability of stores and police to catch and identify thieves, but you'd assume there is a bit of both in the mix.

In the Western Bay, police noticed a change in the shoplifting landscape and reviewed statistics to work out peak times and locations for thefts.

Retail store owners in Rotorua have set up a network where they can share information about shoplifting instances and offenders.

Both are sound local initiatives, as are the efforts reported in both cities to deter would-be thieves through shop layouts that increase visibility, security cameras, and keeping top-value goods away from sticky fingers.

Shoplifting is not a victimless crime and the NZ Retail Association says it has cost retailers $1 billion in the past year - a year that was already pretty tough for some smaller shop owners (annual returns have show many of the big chain store players, however, had a boom year).

The association is campaigning for tougher penalties.

Yet dishonesty crimes - of which theft is one - have some of the highest recidivism rates of any crime in New Zealand, even where people have previously been imprisoned.

I think more focus is needed to address the factors driving a rise in offending - perhaps it's the rising price of cigarettes, economic desperation, an increasing divide between the haves and have-nots, or social pressure to have the latest toys.