In the radical rise of shoplifting, during which retailers have been forced to hire private armies and stock their shelves with decoy versions of the pricier goods, a crime-driver besides gangs and the cost of living crisis has been observed: the middle-class crim who shoplifts with a sense of entitlement. The chair of Marks & Spencer, Archie Norman, described the attitude of some customers to self-checkouts: “This didn’t scan properly, or it’s very difficult to scan these things through and I shop here all the time. It’s not my fault – I’m owed it.” The criminologist Emmeline Taylor said: “They won’t think of themselves as criminals; they will think they’ve cheated the system [and] the big retailers are the real criminals.” Add to this self-righteousness and a growing appreciation of the thrill of theft, and the trend could really get out of hand.
There is something else, though. I interviewed the actor Stockard Channing once and she described some career doldrums with the elegant line: “I couldn’t get arrested.” It floats back to me sometimes, because I now honestly believe I couldn’t get arrested. Nobody checks my bag at bag checks. When there is an unidentified item in the bagging area (not because I’m shoplifting, but because self-checkouts do not, in fact, work that well), the assistant will wave it through without a glance.
