Retail stores’ policies benefit shoplifters

http://www.upiu.com/articles/retail-stores%E2%80%99-policies-benefit-shoplifters

Summary

The article is about how most stores are benefiting the shoplifters. As many small store owner know it is quite expensive to post arrest and this will also hurt their store's image. Instead many stores don't report the shoplifter, instead they ignore it and increase the prices of their products to repay for what they had lost. This really upset the balance because the honest people are basically paying the store, without telling them, and the shoplifter is still out there with the product/s. Places like U.S.A have an average of half a million shoplifting activity each day. With an annual lost of 13 billion dollar worth of merchandises. The number show that 92% of all stores had experienced organized retail crime, and the number will continue to grow as long the economy is going down to the red zone.

Connection

This article connects to the book because there is a section in the book that talks about Detaining Suspects, Legal Charges, False Arrest. Detaining talks about how criminal act must be taken to conform to the Criminal Code. So the stores will try to decrease the chance of them being robbed, by training their employees, and having camera, these will increase security. Yet if the store accused a person of stealing, and the person was found innocent. This can hurt the store name, and the accused person would be able to sue the store. This is related to the article because many stores don't want to face these charges instead they would forget about the problem and increase the prices when the customer don't know about. On the other hand if the store is true to their policies, for example customers won't be able to carry their bags inside this will make the customers uncomfortable, and they might even leave the store because they might feel they are being accused for something they didn't do or planning to do.

Reflection

I personally think the store owner in the article did the right thing for their benefits. If I was the store owner I wouldn't want to risk the chance of accusing somebody because if my conclusion was wrong it will lead me to a lot of trouble. For example the accused person will have the right to sue my store, and I would make my store look bad. If I was true to the policies, I would ask everybody to remove their bags when entering the store, this will make the people uncomfortable which will make them think I don't trust them.