Despite falling losses (in the wake of a £3.2 billion investment in crime detection and prevention measures by retailers during the past five years), there nonetheless remains what Moyes refers to as a "bedrock of retail crime" – worth something in the region of £1.7 billion in 2002 – that retailers cannot hope to deal with under their own steam.
And yet, just 12 months after the BRC's last conference revealed that retail crime is not one of the Key Performance Indicators against which police action is measured ('Grand theft retail', SMT, July 2002, pp32-34), seemingly little has changed.
The Home Office's network of regional crime reduction directors has had a total of £150 million to splash out on preventing crime, but only allocated £3 million last year to initiatives aimed at tackling business crime – less than 2% of the available spend.
Working on a national strategy
Talking exclusively to SMT, Bill Moyes stressed that the BRC wasn't looking to be singled out for special treatment. Just fair treatment.
"Recently, there has been some consultation on setting up a specialist Business Crime Unit," said Moyes, "but we also need to be looking towards a national strategy group involving the Government, police, retailers, members of the security community and other interested parties such that we continue the good work of previous groups like the Home Office-initiated Retail Crime Reduction Action Team."
Moyes is currently "optimistic" that Hazel Blears – John Denham's replacement at the Home Office – will be a driving force, but stressed that "salient issues need to be on the Government's agenda now," and not later on.
Mike Schuck – assistant director of retail crime policy for the BRC, and an active member of SMT's Editorial Advisory Board – followed Moyes with a stark warning that retail crime isn't just a business issue, since two thirds of the losses suffered (ie £1.2 billion) are siphoned off to support drug abuse.
Schuck stated that experience from trials of specialist drug courts in Glasgow and other regional centres north of the border had seen a reduction in offences (of all types) of up to 90%. "By reducing the drug addicts' need to steal in order to obtain their poison," suggested Schuck, "the whole community wins. It's more cost-effective and less sterile than just pointlessly sending abusers to prison."
In addition, Schuck was keen to expand still further on the BRC's stance concerning the "bedrock of retail crime" it claims to need outside help in tackling.
"Using the current methodologies," commented Schuck, "we have to put a disproportionate investment into reducing retail crime significantly below its current levels. The way forward is not about employing more security officers, for example, but instead improving information and raising the visibility of the problem. It's all about preventing crime before it actually happens."
Schuck went on to say: "We need to develop partnerships and shared information strands, and to look at managing people and their behaviour before they arrive in our shops and begin stealing. It's in this way that we're going to be more successful in tackling that stubborn 'lump' of crime."
At present, Moyes and Schuck are in discussions with the Home Office concerning funding arrangements for the appointment of six business crime reduction managers who'll operate regionally in support of local crime reduction partnerships and initiatives. Just now, the work involved is falling solely on Schuck's shoulders at the BRC's London hq.
"We could achieve a good deal more with these managers," urged Schuck. "For instance, by fostering current partnerships, setting up other similar schemes and by spreading the development of Best Practice. The Home Office recognises the pioneering work we've already done, which has taken crime prevention in the business community to a more sophisticated level. It would be prudent to build on that."
The visibility of retail crime
Speaking at the following day's UK Retail Crime and Security Conference at The Hatton in London, Tesco Stores' director of group security John Purnell (chairman of the BRC's Retail Crime Team) returned to Mike Schuck's theme of raising the visibility of retail crime.
Purnell described to the BRC's conference delegates the need to be more proactive in pursuing prosecutions of persistent offenders – 67% of crime is committed by 7% of all known criminals – and the necessity for leveraging maximum value from the information obtained through current initiatives such as the Department of Trade and Industry-funded Business Information Crime System (BICS) national database.
From its beginnings in November 2000 and the initial 12 pilot schemes, the BICS has grown significantly over the past two-and-a-half years according to project director William Price of Retail Decisions. A total of 71 schemes have now attained the BRC's Safer Shopping Award, with over 40 schemes using the BICS and a further 14 awaiting inception. "Partnership working on a local and regional level in England has clearly demonstrated that data pooled centrally between retailers and other businesses can and does work," suggested Price, "providing benefits to business, the public and the police. Many of the city, town and shopping centre managers now embrace CCTV, radio links and exclusion orders, and regard the sharing of information as the very core of their necessary infrastructure."
However, Price added that professional, travelling offenders need to be tracked and information disseminated to other schemes and their members. "One of the most successful ways of deterring offenders is by working together to expose their cloak of anonymity, make them feel vulnerable and, therefore, unable to continue," stated Price. "We need to identify who they are, and have the ability to disseminate that information. It makes sense to be able to centralise and analyse data, and to use the same IT medium to distribute information about criminal activity back out to schemes."
The Home Office’s network of regional crime reduction directors has had a total of £150 million to spend on preventing crime, but only allocated £3 million last year to initiatives aimed at tackling business crime – less than 2% of the available spend
John Purnell also adopted this theme, unveiling details of the ongoing development of a Business Crime Response Bureau, which he hailed as "an exciting concept and an excellent foundation for moving forward".
Purnell's colleague Mike Cornish – project controller for Tesco Stores – was on hand to offer further details. Describing the need to build on the work carried out by the BICS through establishing a single, central source of retail and business crime data, Cornish stated that one of the key differences in the Bureau's approach will be the high profile targeting and prosecution of top offenders, with all the attendant publicity.
"We're aiming to target the 7% of retail criminals who do the most harm," he said, "and to 'market' our successes in a bid to help change the mindset of other criminals."
The Bureau's organisers also intend to divorce data sharing from the current 'Partnership' model. Cornish explained that this would then enable, for example, smaller retailers to browse through the information it collates without necessarily needing to commit personnel resources they don't possess to attend meetings. Accordingly, an Internet-based solution is intended to enable such businesses to 'plug-in' to the Bureau on an 'as-you-go' basis. Similarly, funding for this scheme will be proportionate to the turnover size of the businesses participating in it.
"Instead of BICS' 50 different regional data sources, we'll have one central database through which we can share the information nationally," Cornish told the conference delegates. "This isn't reinventing the wheel. Rather, it's an evolution of the successful BICS solution aimed at realising better value from that concept."
However, Cornish warned that a good deal of work must be completed to turn this concept into reality. "A number of parties still need to buy into the idea. It's likely that it will take 12 months just to put the technical infrastructure in place to support the scheme. Nevertheless," added Cornish, "sizeable opportunities can be realised". Given the increasing cost of crime, can the retail industry really afford not to go down this route?
Violence in the workplace
Moving on to another high priority area for the BRC, violence in the retailing workplace remains a very deep concern despite some reductions in the latest figures when compared with last time around (see box panel 'BRC 10th Annual Retail Crime Survey: an executive summary'). Regardless of these improvements, a significant increase was seen last year in the average of 18 staff per 1,000 members who were subject to threats of violence (compared with 5 per 1,000 in 2001).
Speaking in his capacity as deputy general secretary of the shopworkers' union USDAW, John Hannett outlined the hidden costs of violence. Besides physical injury, trauma, guilt and fear, a high price is being paid by workers and retailers in terms of staff turnover, sickness and absenteeism, not to mention the resultant negative atmosphere generated in stores. An USDAW survey of representatives of its 220,000 members working in the retail sector, published in 2002, showed that half had reported incidents of physical violence in their stores in the past year.
Verbal abuse of staff is another increasingly important issue. 86% of USDAW members surveyed reported such incidents in their stores, while verbal attacks are a daily occurrence in one third of all retail outlets. "We need to work hard at changing the public perception that employment in a shop isn't a proper job," urged Hannett, "and to convey the message that abuse of shop workers is no longer acceptable. It never has been."
Members of the general public are now being encouraged to sign up to a 'Charter of Respect for Shopworkers' in the run-up to a national 'Respect for Shopworkers Day', which takes place on 17 September. As part of this campaign, the Co-operative Group (CWS) is placing signs in its 3,000 outlets stating that violence or verbal abuse of either staff or customers will not be tolerated, that any incidents will be swiftly dealt with and offenders excluded from a given store.
Combating anti-social behaviour
David Pettitt – head of loss prevention for the Co-operative Group, the world's largest consumer co-operative employing over 70,000 staff – reported that, as part of its current risk reduction measures, changes have been made in confrontation management procedures. For example, banning notices cannot now be signed by local store managers. Instead, they're processed by Head Office to improve staff anonymity. CWS has also obtained 11 anti-social behaviour orders thus far, working directly with police forces across the country.
The Home Office's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit is developing an upcoming initiative to raise the profile of anti-social behaviour orders, Pettitt noted, while the Scarman Centre at the University of Leicester has been progressing a violence software application that measures the perception of software within the store.
Mike Schuck pointed out that the higher victimisation rate for out-of-town stores when compared with town centre shops – as discussed in the BRC's 10th Annual Retail Crime Survey – is mainly due to their location, the nature of goods on sale, social deprivation in such areas and the type of customer they attract. "Many criminals see these outlets as piggybanks," suggested Schuck, "yet the smaller, independent retailers aren't as responsive to these problems. It's much more difficult to persuade them to take positive action in tackling the issues involved."
That said, a BRC video and training package is being produced in conjunction with conflict management specialist Maybo (whose managing director Bill Fox also spoke at the conference) as an induction programme for frontline retail staff on how to manage violence and aggression in the workplace.
Credit and debit card fraud
Other ongoing efforts to tackle retail crime include a trial in the Northampton area of the 'chip and PIN' system being adopted by the banking industry to counter rising credit and debit card fraud. The trial forms the first part of a national roll-out of the scheme, which is intended to phase out the use of signatures for authorising card transactions by 2005.
Finally, the BRC has helped in promoting a research programme currently being conducted by Professor Martin Gill's new venture Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International. The research is examining the effect on the guarding sector of security industry regulation and other factors (such as the potential removal of the UK derogation on the Working Time Directive). Due for completion next February, the study is intended to provide vision for retailers on issues such as future training requirements.
Above all, the 2002 BRC survey serves to highlight the seemingly low priority afforded to retail crime by UK police forces.
Source
SMT
No comments yet