Items are displayed in November in the window of a Burberry store on Michigan Avenue along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. According to a recent report from the Council on Criminal Justice, the number of reported shoplifting incidents in the city increased 46% between January and October 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
CHICAGO — Shoplifting rates in the three largest U.S. cities — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — remain higher than before the pandemic, according to a report last month from the nonpartisan research group Council on Criminal Justice.
The sharp increase in shoplifting in recent years has made shoplifting a hot topic, especially for politicians looking to address public safety concerns in their communities.
Since 2020, when viral videos of robberies flooded social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans have expressed fears that crime has spiraled out of control. Polls show that perception has improved recently, but that applies to a majority of Americans still say Crime is worse than in previous years.
“People have a sense of brutality: they can just walk in and steal things. … That hurts the consumer, and it hurts the business,” Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview.
“That’s just the world we live in,” he said. “We have to make people realize that you have to obey the law.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least eight states — Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New York and Vermont — have passed a total of 14 bills aimed at tackling shoplifting by 2024. The measures range from redefining retail crime and adjusting penalties to allowing national aggregation of theft charges and protecting store workers.
Major retailers have responded to rising theft since 2020 by locking up merchandise, upgrading security cameras, hiring private security companies and even closing stores.
Still, the report indicates that shoplifting remains a persistent problem.
In Chicago, the number of reported shoplifting incidents remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2023 – but rose 46% between January and October 2024 compared to the same period a year ago.
Shoplifting in Los Angeles was 87% higher in 2023 than in 2019. Police reports of shoplifting from January to October 2024 were lower than in 2023. Los Angeles implemented a new crime reporting system in March 2024, which researchers say likely led to an undercount . to the report.
In New York, shoplifting increased 48% between 2021 and 2022, before declining slightly last year. Still, the shoplifting rate in 2023 was 55% higher than in 2019. This year, the shoplifting rate increased by 3% from January to September compared to the same period last year.
While shoplifting rates typically rise in November and December, coinciding with in-person holiday shopping, data from a Council on Criminal Justice sample of 23 U.S. cities show higher rates in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023.
Researchers found it surprising that rates rose despite retailers doing more to combat shoplifting. Experts say the spike may be a result of improved reporting efforts rather than a spike in theft.
“As retailers increasingly pay attention to shoplifting, we do not expect the numbers to increase,” said Ernesto Lopez, author of the report and senior research specialist at the council. “It makes it challenging to understand shoplifting trends.”
Impact on retailers, communities
In downtown Chicago on a recent early afternoon, would-be shoppers shuffled through the streets and nearby malls looking for gifts ahead of the holiday season.
According to a separate study, between 2018 and 2023, most shoplifting in Chicago was reported in the downtown area, as well as in the Old Town, River North and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. analysis by the Criminal Justice Council.
Newly sworn-in Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke this month lowered the threshold for charging shoplifting as a misdemeanor in the county, which includes Chicago, from $1,000 to $300, bringing it into line with state law .
“It sends a message that she’s taking it seriously,” Rob Karr, the president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, told Stateline.
Nationally, retailers are concerned about organized theft. The latest from the National Retail Federation report attributed 36% of the $112.1 billion in lost goods in 2022 to “external theft,” which also includes organized retail crime.
Organized retail crime typically involves coordinated attempts by groups to steal items with the intention of reselling them for a profit. Commonly targeted goods include high-demand items such as baby food, laundry detergent, and electronics.
The same report shows that retailers’ fears of violence related to theft are also increasing, with more and more retailers taking a “hands-off” approach. More than 41% of respondents to the organization’s 2023 survey, up from 38% in 2022, reported that no employee has the authority to try to stop a shoplifter.
(The federation’s reporting has been criticized withdrawn a claim last year that attributed almost half of lost goods in 2021 to organized retail crime; such theft represented only about 5%. The group announced this fall that it will no longer publish its lost property reports.)
Increased penalties
Policy experts say shoplifting and organized retail theft can significantly harm critical industries, drive up costs for consumers and reduce sales tax revenues for states. These concerns have led to recent state-level action to increase penalties for shoplifting.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of ten bills in August aimed at tackling shoplifting. These measures make repeat convictions for theft a misdemeanor, allow crimes from multiple counties to be charged as one crime, and give police the ability to arrest suspects for shoplifting even if the crime was not directly witnessed by an officer. In September Newsom signed an additional bill that imposes higher penalties for large-scale theft crimes.
California voters are also overwhelming approved a ballot measure in November that would increase penalties for specific drug-related crimes and thefts. Under the new law, people convicted of theft at least twice can be prosecuted for their third offense, regardless of the value of the stolen item.
“With these changes in the law, what it really comes down to is making sure that law enforcement shows up in our stores in a timely manner, and that prosecutors and (district attorneys) prosecute,” said Rachel Michelin, the president and CEO. of the California Retailers Association, told Stateline. “That’s the only way we can stop shoplifting in our communities.”
In New Jersey, a bipartisan one account If it passes the Legislature, it would increase penalties for leading a shoplifting ring and allow for extended sentences for repeat offenders.
“This bill goes after a formally organized gang of criminals who wreak such havoc on a vital business in our community. We must act. We need to create a deterrent,” Democratic Assemblymember Joseph Danielsen, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said in an interview with Stateline.
The legislation would allow extended sentences for people convicted of three counts of shoplifting within 10 years or within 10 years of their release from prison, and would increase penalties to 10 to 20 years in prison for running a retail crime ring.
The bill would also allow law enforcement to total the value of stolen goods over the course of a year, allowing serial shoplifters to commit more serious offenses. In addition, the bill would increase penalties for attacks on retail workers and require retailers to train their employees to spot gift card scams.
Maryland lawmakers were considering something similar account during this year’s legislative session, organized shoplifting would have been defined and made a crime.
The bill did not make it out of committee, but Cailey Locklair, president of the Maryland Retailers Alliance, said the group hopes to reintroduce the bill next year and propose another bill that would target gift card fraud.
Shoplifting data
Better, more thorough reporting by retailers is essential to truly understand shoplifting trends and its full impact, in part because some retail-related crimes, such as gift card fraud, are often underreported, according to Lopez of the Council on Criminal Justice.
Measuring crime in different jurisdictions is notoriously difficultand the city does not specifically monitor organized retail theft because law enforcement typically does not identify it as such at the time of arrest — if an arrest is made at all — which requires further investigation, Lopez said.
The council’s latest report finds conflicting trends in the FBI’s national crime reporting systems.
The FBI’s older system, the Summary Reporting System, known as SRS, suggests that the number of reported shopliftings has not increased in 2023 and remains at the same level as in 2019. In contrast, the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) shows FBI saw a 93% increase in shoplifting during the same period.
The discrepancy may stem from the type of law enforcement agencies that have adopted the latter system, Lopez said. Some of these communities may be seeing increased shoplifting or other forms of property crime, which could be behind the spike, Lopez said.
Despite the discrepancies and varying levels of shoplifting across the country, Lopez says, it is important for retailers to report these incidents as it can help allocate law enforcement resources more effectively.
“All law enforcement agencies have limited resources, and having the most accurate information not only makes for better policy, but also better implementation – better use of strategic resources,” Lopez said.
Stateline staff writer Robbie Sequeira contributed to this report.
State border is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Scott S. Greenberger: [email protected].