KEY POINTS:
Criminals appear to be getting younger with reports of five-year-olds shoplifting and being trained to help their parents steal.
Invercargill shops have been hit by a string of the youth crimes recently, with children being used as distractions while their parents shoplift, the Southland Times reported today.
New Zealand Retailers Association security adviser Steve Davis confirmed Southland shops had fallen victim to the growing new shoplifting phenomenon.
"Nobody suspects children," Mr Davis said.
He said using children was just one of many new forms, styles and techniques of theft being tried by shoplifters.
A Invercargill retailer spoke of an incident last month when she had watched a child - possibly as young as three years old - try to take something from her shop.
The child made "adult shoplifting moves", hiding the object in her hand and putting it in her clothing once she was behind a shopping stand.
It was deliberate and fluid, and seemed like "learned" behaviour, the retailer said.
In a similar situation last year, the retailer said she had dealt with a pair of children younger than 10 who waited for her to turn her back so they could "pocket" an item from her shelf.
"I looked at them and thought 'oh my goodness, you're trying to steal from me, what is your parent doing'," she said.
The parent appeared to have moved stock behind a stand with the intention of coming back later.
Senior Sergeant Olaf Jensen, of Invercargill police, said children-in-shoplifting incidents had been reported before, and for cases of children under 14 they were referred to Youth Aid.
Under the Crimes Act they cannot be prosecuted for shoplifting.
However, caregivers could be charged as a "party to the offence" if they had actively encouraged their child to steal.
"They (the parents) are as guilty as the person undertaking the crime,' Mr Jensen said.
- NZPA
