[user104658]

Personally I think what I said above re: insurance is the biggest part of the problem here, not lack of policing. Staff have no interest in physically stopping shoplifters because it’s not their stock and they’re not paid enough by the big faceless corps to put themselves in harms way. The companies themselves don’t care that much because the loss is covered by insurance which most of the time is mandatory anyway.

So no one has any real reason to stop the thieves… and the people doing the thieving know that… so they are emboldened. The problem is big-company-capitalism and the apathy that comes with that world.

The same thing is rife with self-checkout-shoplifting. Yes there’s an attendant who is meant to be watching, but what incentive does a skinny 20 year old on minimum wage have to confront a shoplifting junkie who might well be armed with a knife or needle? What does it matter to them if Tesco loses a tenners worth of stock? What does it matter to Tesco themselves, so long as their quarterly figures are trending upwards?