LPRC - CrimeScience Episode 253: Inside Shoplifters’ Minds (feat. Justin Smith, PhD)

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Join Cory Lowe, PhD, and Justin Smith, PhD, of the LPRC as they reflect on Smith’s offender research program. To learn more about shoplifting offenders, read Smith’s report, Who Shoplifts? A Profile of the Offenders Behind Retail Theft.

Hi everyone and welcome to crime science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. My name is Corey Lowe. I'm the director of research here at the LPRC, and I'm joined today by Dr. Justin Smith. Justin, welcome. Hey, Corey, how you doing? Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to you as well. I had to think for a minute to get them all in line there, but yes, they're very happy to be here. Yes. Well, you and I both are doing this in the afternoon, but I'm really excited to talk to you today about the work that you've been doing with self-reported offenders. You know, we've always had offenders come through the labs and we've done interviews with them to understand their perspective. But can you tell us a little bit about, that self-reported offender program?

Yeah, absolutely. So in 2025, I began this self-reported offender recruitment initiative program. And the goal was to recruit shoplifters and get them to come to the labs and talk to us and just explain to us their motivations, how it is they select stores, what types of merchandise, they steal, their theft techniques, how they do it. And the goal ultimately for me is just to understand how and why so that we can be able to begin to kind of break down that thinking and find intervention points where we can stop them or slow them down. Fantastic. Now, we've been doing affirmative research for a while. We've done it on a lot of different

individual projects when we bring offenders in and refocus on specific solutions, specific situations. How does this program that you've been running differ from that research? The goal with this program is to build a standardized data set. So every offender that comes through the door and that sits down for an interview with me, they get a standardized questionnaire that has questions on topics like store selection, merchandise, collection, theft techniques, demographic information about themselves, right? So, you know, age, race, gender, income, whether they're employed or not, also arrest and conviction history. So that we're building just a very comprehensive and robust data set on shop lifters that we can

use to answer a multitude of different research questions. Fantastic. Thank you for that. Now, with this recent report that you put out, it covers some of the general information about this program, some of the things that you've learned. One of the things I found to be very interesting is that 89% of the participants said that they were successful most of the time or almost always. Now, can you contextualize that and explain to everyone what that means successful? Yeah, absolutely. So successful means a completed theft without being apprehended. So in other words, if I'm a shoplifter and I want to steal a pack of razor blades, I went into the store and I stole that pack of razor blades and I made it out of the store without being approached or apprehended. The rate of success is concerning.

By definition, it means that there's going to be limited charging that happens. But I think there's a little bit more here. So many of the respondents said that they had not experienced being charged for shoplifting. So they're very successful. That leads to less charges. But there's some more of the story there. Can you explain that a bit? Yeah.

So what's interesting is that if you look at it, and again, we'll begin with a success rate, right? So it was 89 percent. So 41 out of 46 said that they were successful shoplifting most or almost all the time. But then I have another question about whether they have previously been charged with shoplifting. And there, 33 percent, 16 out of 49, that answered that question indicated that they had been previously charged with shoplifting. So what this is saying to me is that we have a high level of success. So offenders that are reporting that they are stealing the merchandise from the store and getting away with it. And we have a comparatively low level of offenders that are actually getting charged with shoplifting. So we have to think about like how exactly that may

happen or why that may be happening. So you could have offenders that one group that is just successful. They're committing the shoplifting acts that are successful. They get away with it. The crime is undetected. I mean, it shows up maybe on a shrink report, but otherwise they're undetected because they're not apprehended. Then you may have another group of offenders that are actually apprehended, so they're not successful, but they are not formally charged. So, you know, maybe they're brought into the back, information is taken on them, maybe they're given a warning. They might be trespass from the property, but there's not a formal charge of shoplifting. And then the next level up would be offenders that are actually apprehended and the police are brought in and they are charged with shoplifting.

So that number is quite small compared to the number that is reporting that they're successful. So I think the story that this tells is that, you know, we have a lot of success out there. Again, this is self-reported offender success, but a relatively low number that are actually formally charged with shoplifting. So it seems like a lot of folks are getting away with it, unfortunately. Yes, and that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg, because from there, if they're not being charged, then they're not being prosecuted and they're probably not changing their ways. So that's a bit concerning. Another thing that is interesting and concerning is that about 18% said that they knew an employee who was assisting that in stealing. Was that surprising to you?

And what does it tell us about the role of those insiders? Yeah, that was a very interesting statistic. So, you know, I'm an academic, and when I first saw it, I thought 18 percent, okay, you know, kind of low. But one of the benefits of working at the LPRC is that we get to interact regularly with retailers and retail partners. And I was having a conversation with one of our research. retailers about this and share that statistic. And he thought it was alarming. And he just said, wow, that's really not good because what that means is that we have a lot of just internal bad actors. So we have employees in our stores that are actually helping some of those external bad actors

get away with shoplifting. Because again, I'm interviewing the, I mean, these are self-reported offenders that are coming into the stores from the outside. They're the external bad actors. But what this means is that at least 18% of them are working with somebody on the inside of facilitate shoplifting. And the retailer I spoke with was very concerned about that. Now, moving forward, we want everyone to go out and read the rest of this report that you've recently released. But I know it's a lot more coming down the pipe. Where are you taking this research? What's next? And where are you going to, where you go from here? So, as you may have noticed, just in the title of the R2P itself, this is called this series, I'm calling it inside the shoplifter's mind, and this is part one.

So I'm thinking that this is going to be a nine-part series of R2Ps where I'll be releasing a little bit of information. from this omnibus survey that we did of our 51 offenders. So future R2Ps are going to cover topics like, why are they stealing? So motivation, this one was really about the who is stealing, right? The demographics. Future RTPs are going to focus on why are they stealing? When do they decide to shoplift and how do they plan a shoplifting event if they do?

Why do they target certain stores? I'm going to have an R2P on store selection. I'm going to have an R2P on how they steal. So what theft techniques do they actually use? I'm going to have another R2P about what security devices actually affect them, what solutions have actually stopped them. I'm going to have another one on repeat victimization. So why do they go back to certain stores?

And then I'm also going to have one on resellers. So focusing. specifically on shoplifters that are reselling. And then I think I'll close out the series just with an overview of just really everything that we learned in these 51 interviews. So, yeah, definitely looking forward to getting more of those R2Ps out there and sharing with our members more of the great things we learned through the Omnibus Survey. Excellent. And I think that everyone's gotten a flavor for what this actually provides. It's really, really important for us to do store trials and all the different types of research,

but it's also very helpful for us to understand all these other factors that affect their choices and why they make the decisions that they make. So it's a great program. It really helps us think about all the issues related to product theft and everything. So thank you for the work that you're doing. doing and I look forward to seeing what comes next. Thank you, Justin. Yeah, thank you, Corey. It's great having me on. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime

science episodes and valuable information at LPRsearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the crime. Science podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.