Major high street retailers are being plagued by middle-class shoplifters in Britain. Fashion outlets are a natural target for middle-class thieves, with Marks & Spencer reporting the challenge presented by “swipers” who appear polite and normal while consistently stealing from shops.
Retail crime is caused mainly by poverty or gangs, but criminals have become increasingly sophisticated in how they target retailers. Chairman of Marks & Spencer Archie Norman recently spoke of a rise in affluent customers stealing from shops.
He told LBC: “You get the sort of middle class… with the reduction of service you get in a lot of shops, a lot of people go in and think, ‘well this didn’t scan 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’.”
Ex-John Lewis boss Sharon White described the thefts as an “epidemic”. Customer theft losses reached £2.2 billion with over 2000 incidents per day, according to the latest crime survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
Some Reddit users have disagreed, saying that middle-class shoplifters have been around for years. One user blamed “bored middle-class housewives nicking stuff for the thrill of it.”
Another user said they had worked in retail their whole life, but one character particularly stood out. They said: “One of our shoplifters I’d seen at my last job was a pretty rich old man. Just took newspapers or the odd meal deal item usually.
“He ate in the customer cafe and always had a wallet stacked full of 50’s. He’d put them in his wife’s handbag and if he was ever caught he’d blame it on her dementia. He’d been doing it for years.”
Many retailers are improving their physical and technological security through CCTV, anti-theft devices and bodycams, but not everyone is deterred by these measures.
Tesco has an all-hours monitoring centre which reviews thousands of hours of CCTV and AI detection strategies. The Co-op also trialled AI to spot shoplifters and concealed weapons.
The BRC’s latest crime survey showed that there has been a 50% rise in violence in shops. The Retail Trust reported that 63% of people working in retail feel anxious or stressed about going to work.
The government introduced a Retail Crime Action Plan in 2023 which commits to a police response to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry when recovering stolen goods and securing convictions when retailers support police investigation.
The shops have to submit CCTV footage and images of shoplifters via a digital system. A bill has just been introduced in parliament – the Crime and Policing Bill – which includes tougher laws on retail crime.
It details stricter penalties for shoplifting items under £200, and makes it a new offence to assault a shop worker.
