Yet the latter remains the key building block in reducing retail crime, claims Mike Schuck, assistant director of retail crime at the BRC. At present there are some 250 retail crime initiatives in towns and cities across the UK. Working on the principle of linking CCTV monitoring, using radio links, photographs, sharing information and serving exclusion notices on criminals working in the area, they aim to reduce, and ultimately stop offences altogether. Says Schuck: "The retail community is particularly vulnerable. By recruiting retailers to these schemes, we get better results than by giving radios to the police. It's about community safety, using retailers to promote safer town centres leading to safer shopping.
Capital moves
While such schemes are supported by the Home Office through its Retail Crime Reduction Action Team (RCRAT) which recently issued a code of practice advising retailers to comply with data protection regulations, the required funding to move them forward remains a sticking point. Says Schuck: "Although the Home Office is supportive, they would see their support as being channelled in by capital for CCTV. But the HO needs to broaden its thinking and make funds available to these town centre schemes. We want retail partnerships to become embedded in crime prevention philosophy. Capital funding would be promising to make an active contribution to move these schemes forward."
National Database
So far, says Schuck, the schemes are good at managing what they know. According to police recorded crime statistics, 67% of recorded crime is committed by 7% of known criminals. What the schemes now need to gather information on is 'travelling thieves' - thieves who travel from out-of-town areas where their faces may not be known and so evade capture. What would make the individual schemes come into their own would be to set up a national database, so information on criminals can be passed on to retailers nationwide, allowing them to capture the most prolific offenders.
Schuck elaborates:"At the moment, the schemes are all standalone schemes. But they can't talk to each other and can't exchange data. We have secured £300,000 worth of funding from the Department of Trade and industry to develop a data link project in the Midlands which will link these schemes together to share information on criminals, on the movements of cars, on particular types of criminal activity which might be new and give these pieces of information to local schemes as part of their early warning measures. But we also need to trap more of the expensive travelling thieves who manage to evade capture."
The success of the standalone schemes themselves is impressive. Local data sharing has so far notched up a 30% reduction in recorded town centre crime in Romford while shop theft has been reduced by 37% in Norwich and 50% in Maidstone.
Within three years, however, it's hoped that the national database would be up and running, linking all schemes which come up to the required standard.
Giant leap
The first step towards the national database comes this month with the launch of the BICS (Business Information Crime Systems) project, which is being part-funded by the Department of Trade and Industry under its Management of Information project. It aims to provide a secure means of data transfer between crime reduction partnerships. Developed by Retail Decisions (ReD) and backed by the BRC, BICS links 12 sites in the Midlands which come under the Midlands Retail Crime Initiative. It allows them to exchange data and target criminals travelling from one area to another, linking towns, retail parks and business parks. The two year project kicks off in November, and will lead to an inter-regional crime prevention scheme, and finally into a national crime prevention scheme. It will investigate the good practice of data use at sites, and look at how this impacts on crime and the fear of crime. The project will be validated by Leicester University who are acting as academic partners to address some of the social issues. These include the opportunity to look at organisational structure and behaviour, its impact on town scheme members, customers and staff who use these centres.
Bill Price, retail risk manager and project manager for BICS, says: "Crime reduction partnerships are emerging in different forms throughout the UK, and through RCRAT are being taught how to set up and develop community partnerships. The next level within those schemes is to collect data on criminals, and allow towns to link information and target travelling criminals. It is an area in need of research."
Chasing crime
“This is about serious crime reduction. It is not a flash in the pan and we are holding these figuresfor the second year and will improve on them. The spin off is that there appears to be a change in the way thieves are operating. They know that if the st
So does this spell the end for crime in the retail community? Chris James, who is manager/coordinator at the Birmingham city retail crime operation has recruited some 800 retail outlets to its exclusion scheme. Working from an office provided by Rackhams, a House of Fraser store, he maintains the scheme takes away the opportunity for people to do anything which is not conducive to good trading. In the 12 months up to May this year, Rackhams reduced theft from 5.8% to 1.6% while the overall reduction to reported shop theft in the city centre has been reduced by 33%.
Says James: "This is about serious crime reduction. It is not a flash in the pan, and we are holding these figures for the second year and will improve on them.
The spin off is that there appears to be a change in the way thieves are operating. They know that if the store displays a sticker about the scheme, then there is also a book of photographs of known offenders. In their risk assessment before they enter the store, thieves know that they will be identified. If they are known, then they become accountable and can be arrested for criminal activity. We can therefore raise the profile of certain individuals who are prolific thieves, who should not be in our stores.
So where are thieves going? There is a shift, says James. "I'm not sure where they are going, but our steering committee is looking at the number of out-of-town shopping centres wanting to join our scheme. We are aware of the shifting process, and it may well be that other retailers have yet to go down the grief road. But we should inform them of who these thieves are, and they must also inform us."
From his experience as a police officer, James warns however that thieves are resourceful and will move on to other areas of criminal activity. "Most shop theft is drug motivated. If a person has a heroin habit of £100 per day, they would need to steal £300 worth of goods to convert it into £100, so that is serious motivation," says James.
Most important for security companies however is that exclusion schemes such as these provide them with a yardstick to measure their success rate. In Birmingham, James has devised a 'Deterred at Entry' form. As soon as known offenders are seen, they are required to leave as 'excluded persons'', and keeping a record of the number of people deterred gives security managers a way of monitoring the number of potential thefts they prevent.
Employee Database
Apart from managing databases to exclude known customer thieves, retailers are also shutting the back door on staff thieves, by tightening up recruitment procedures. The Employer's Mutual Protection Service (EMPS) is a database of around 60,000 staff who have previously been dismissed for gross misconduct, covering any offence serious enough to destroy the working relationship between employer and employee. These include, assault, falsification of records, fraud, theft, abuse, serious loss and other offences.
Approved by the BRC and run by Lodge Service, the DP registered database is used by loss prevention and human resource managers as a means by which to check references thoroughly Subscribers pay a quarterly membership fee depending on the size of the organisation, and then a nominal sum (55p per name) for every prospective employee they check. Most employers who now use the system also make known to prospective employees that their names will be checked, in line with DP recommendations.
Both Toys R Us and Warner Brothers Studio Stores have used the system to check retail staff they recruit. Mitch Haynes, loss prevention manager at Warner Brothers Studio Stores which has 15 stores around the country employing around 400 staff, maintains that while the system does not go into specific details about recruits who have been flagged up on the system, it is useful in alerting HR managers that there has been an issue worth checking. Says Haynes: "It is particularly useful if you are recruiting large numbers of people at the same time. What it allows is that it tells you to investigate references a bit further. If someone has left under suspicion or investigation, quite often the details of their employment history tend not to be accurate. It is then up to retailer to check out those details."
But like the proposed database on customer thieves, all the information held on EMPS is required to be processed fairly and lawfully.
Retail Crime Statistics - 1999
Source
SMT
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