LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly R2P Review – Episode 228 Ft. Christina Burton, PhD

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, host Alex Palomar sits down again with Christina Burton to continue exploring the real human impact of retail crime. Tune in as they discuss why victim perspectives matter, how frontline voices can drive better solutions, and what it takes to build safer retail communities.

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. Hello, crime science podcast listeners. My name is Alex Palomar, and I am your crime science podcast host for the day. Today we have Dr. Christina Burton with us, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice. Christina, it's so great to have you. Pleasure to be here. Christina will be going over her second voice of the victim R2P report today. So let's start off by you just summarizing the report for those who may not have had a chance to read it, please.

Sure. So there have been a total of three R2Ps on this particular initiative of the voice of the victim where we're trying to investigate the impacts of violence or fear of victimization on retail workers, both for themselves. so what kind of effects do they have themselves, but also the ripple effects to their friends, family, and communities. And so this is the first RTP that analyzes data from the second wave of data collection, because we did a wave of collection in 2024, where we did 1,012 retail workers in a survey and 10 people for interviews, but in this way, we did 1,000 retail workers just with surveys.

And so in this particular breakdown, we're looking at the different types of stores, and seeing if there are differences in retail workers of, say, a convenience store versus a warehouse in terms of their fear of victimization and the types of technologies and solutions that they prefer. And this analysis does show that there are some differences. But there's also some important findings that kind of mirror a previous RTP that I did that look at the gender and racial differences among retail workers were essentially like, yes, there may be some differences in their feelings of safety or their priorities of technologies for

feeling better. In the end, they really just want the same thing. So they want live video security monitoring, on-site security guards, and alarm systems broadly across the types of stores. So it seems like in the results of your R2P, it said that retail workers in convenience stores and drug stores felt the most unsafe. They did. Why do you think that is? The study, unfortunately, doesn't go into great detail as to the why, which is why follow-up studies are really important. But if we were to make a hypothesis as to why this might be happening, it really might boil down to what types of experiences those retail workers may have relative to the other types. So just to give some reference for the folks listening in, we looked at seven different, quote-unquote, types of stores.

So we have big box stores, so think your super stores. We have a convenience store, department store, drugstore, grocery and supermarkets, retail warehouses and specialty stores as kind of the categories that they could self-elect into. And so what could be happening is that the types of violence that convenience that convenience stores and drugstores might be experiencing might be more in the robbery realm, in part because they have very valuable items. You know, drugstores have drugs, obviously. But convenience stores have quick access to cash might be an option there as opposed to other types of stores that might be larger,

or they may have different security systems that might deter certain types of offenders. Again, this is kind of hypotheses. You know, we'd have to do further studies to better figure out why they might have those experiences. Something else that was alluded to in the study as well is that if you think about like the number of employees that are working on shift for those types of, the stores, it might be vastly different. So a convenience store might only have one individual working in the store at the same time as maybe in a department store there are multiple, right? And so there might be some differences there in terms of kind of the structure of how a shift happens in those types of stores as well. So less support. And you kind of say that in the results

later on in your study where a lot of these stores prefer on-site guards as well. Do you think that kind of plays into it. I think so, but I also think that there's something about on-site guards that I think is broadly appealing, even if you are in a larger big box store, right? Because you have someone dedicated to deterring and stopping or apprehending individuals that is separate to your normal LPAP team. So there might be some appeal just in having, you know, a guard there, right? Even the name might evoke a kind of feeling for retail workers that might be different. Yeah. And shout out to Dr. Sam Young. We did his podcast a few weeks ago about his guard study. I encourage those who are listening to go take a look at that. And he actually reviewed this paper

to provide some suggestions there as well. So kudos to him. And there you go. There you have it. Amazing. So another part of your results say that, and I found it not necessarily, contradicting but confusing to me for that doesn't have as much industry experience or is not a scientist but drugstores also have the lowest concern for active shooters even though they have the most feelings of unsafe. Why do you think there's that discrepancy there? Yeah so what this really highlights is that fear is a catch-all for a lot of different things that they are afraid of. So So, yes, we might think of an active assailant situation as the worst possible situation that could happen from a violence standpoint.

And it is, right, like in terms of the scale and the harm that can be done. But it's very, very rare relative to other forms of victimization. So what I suspect might be happening is that they are not as afraid of it because they're more exposed to other fears, right? And so robbery is a good one, right? They are more likely to experience and maybe be fearful of robbery because it's more likely to happen in those spaces versus kind of an active assailant situation.

And also think about where active assailant situations happen. Are they more likely to happen in a drug store or like a big box store, you know, relatively speaking, in a retail space? Or are they more likely to happen in a school setting versus a workplace, right? And so it might just be, you know, that it's not as common. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There is the, you know,

right-age shooting at a distribution center right? I'm not saying that it doesn't happen in those places. It's just relatively speaking. It's probably not the most common kind of victimization that they are experiencing and thus it's not the most pressing on their mind. Yeah, and that 100% makes sense. So then in some of your tables, it shows that specialty stores are pretty high amongst all the categories that had the highest percentage of ratings. Why do you think that is? So again, it's kind of difficult to really assess because the survey doesn't deep dive into the Y's. And surveys are not designed very well to deep into those whys or the hows.

But if we were to make a guess, this is probably in a fact of, we sometimes see this in some fear studies looking at, say, rural versus urban versus suburban areas, where there can be escalated fear. in suburban areas, not because they experience it, but they might be exposed to news that might cause them to be fearful, even if the natural state of things might be relatively low. Again, does not mean that victimization does not happen in specialty stores. To be clear, it's just probably relative to other types of stores. It's probably low, but the employees or the customer base may be highly sensitive to violence because it's so rare to them. So it might be a little bit more pressing in that way. So it might be kind of an opposite effect of what we were talking about with the drugstores, right?

Where because it's not very common to them, they don't think about it. But in this case, it might be that because they have such low rates of victimization, they might be less concerned about it. Or perhaps they're more concerned about theft as opposed to, you know, other types of violence. you know, so there might be some effects happening there too. Yeah, and this begs the question of what are the conditions of fear and how does that play into absolutely everything. Obviously, we don't necessarily go into that in the report, but I would definitely be interested

in hearing. Yeah, so there could be follow-up study to better disentangle, you know, what conditions are necessary to elicit that fear, and there is body of research that looks into fear of victimization. So it's not like it's an uncommon, you know, literature set, but it would be interesting to see, especially in a retail setting, you know, what conditions are necessary because then you could potentially prevent them, right? And so, you know, a core thing of what we try to do is to prevent harm. And so if we better understand how harm happens, then it can better help us figure out what ways we can do to prevent it. And this study is kind of a baseline.

line, right? We really need to understand, well, what is happening before we can really deep dive into how is it happening. Yeah, and that's all fascinating. It kind of plays into psychology a bit, I feel like. And then I just wanted to go through the findings found in Table 3, which was the preferences of technology by type of store. I found this fascinating. Again, I don't have industry experience or not a research scientist or anything, but it seems like every part of those summaries, those findings in the summary section had a reason. for being the way that it is. Yeah, so I'll give a quick recap for those that haven't read the article about what it found.

So towards the end of the RTP, I was trying to look to see if there were different technologies that gave peace of mind by those different store types or by retail workers in those different store types. And we found that three of them were what we call statistically significant. So, you know, looking at the distribution of the percentages of people who responded in particular way. We're fairly confident that this is not random chance, that there is something happening between the retail workers in those types of stores and their preference differences of AI-based video analytics, barriers lock gates, and enhanced access control. Those are the three

technologies that were statistically significant here. And so what we found, or what I found here, was that retail warehouse workers were essentially preferring AI-based video analytics and enhanced access control over other categories of store employees, and specialty stores prefer barrier and locked gates relative to other kinds of groups. And so what could be happening, again, if we look at, say, the barrier and locked gates, right, there might be something going on in specialty stores. So maybe their experience with violence might be smash and grabs. That might be something that happens in, say, like a jewelry store, as an example.

And so what they might feel is that, well, if I have a barrier in front of my store, it's harder for, say, a car to drive through and thus commit a smash and grab. So there might be some dynamic happening that's unique to that particular type of store. And again, for, like, warehouse workers, you know, they have a large facility that they are operating under. And so they may want additional video coverage and using AI analytics. I can tell you from the supply chain working group

that they are very much interested in AI video analytics broadly. And so that might be also trickling down into retail workers within that space, as well as better forms of access control, right? So those are things that are being discussed in supply chain specifically. So I'm not terribly surprised that they're also popping up with the retail work

just because of the conditions in that warehouse. But for a specialty store, it was kind of interesting that it was so high relative to some of the other categories. But again, it might be because of that unique experience of maybe they're experiencing more smash and grabs. Although we did ask in the survey to see if they did experience it and it didn't pop up as significant, but perhaps because they know that it is something that happens in specialty stores, perhaps they kind of associate it with them as opposed to being actual victims of that crime. of that crime. And that's another thing, too, to keep in mind is that fear of victimization is different from actual victimization. And so sometimes we have that fear of being victimized,

even if we've never been a victim of it, or maybe we don't even know anybody that's been a victim of it just because of circumstances. And it seems like most of the respondents were retail warehouse or distribution center workers. Do you feel like that kind of skewed the results of it? It can. So it was interesting that almost a third of respondents were in retail warehouse and distribution centers. Now, it's good that they're in there. I wanted to make sure that they were there because they are a subset of your employee base. So it's good to see what the differences are between more customer-facing employees versus maybe more back-of-house-style employees. But what we try to do is we try our best to control as much as we can the differences

in those sample sizes. And that's what a bivariate analysis tries to do at least, is that you're doing percentages relative to that sample size to see if the percentages are different, not necessarily the actual volume of the cases. So those are some of the ways we try to. And it's a little more complicated and that, but I'm trying to simplify it for this podcast. But that's just some of the ways in which we try to deal with those different sample sizes is to try to look at it, relatively speaking, within its category, what are the differences? Yeah. And do you feel like the, those, that sector of workers, the warehouse workers and the distribution centers, were they underrepresented in previous studies? Is that why we were adamant, is that including

them this time? Well, I think part of it. Part of it is I'm a little selfish because I work in the supply chain protection working group, so I try to represent them as much as I can. But I do think it does present a unique use case for some of these experiences with violence because they're going to be different just because of the conditions in which they operate, but they all operate under retail, right? And so that was more of my desire to get this rolling. Some other avenues we would like to explore as well.

We just couldn't for this particular series of distribution. was we also want to try to explore other retail sectors such as quick service restaurants, right? Because they're probably going to have different experiences, in fact I'm willing to bet that they're going to have different experiences than say retail warehouse workers, but they might also have differences in terms of, you know, the types of clientele that are going into those spaces. I do remember from some of the interviews that we did in the 2024 data set collection that when I asked them about that I asked them about that. about their prior experiences in retail,

there are plenty that had worked in quick service restaurants, and those types of interactions were a little different, but they still operated with similar hostile clients, right? So you have very hungry customers who are demanding their food, and that might increase or escalate their chance of violence. And it's kind of a similar situation with, you know, customer facing retail workers

with experiences with returns as well. You have a very hostile customer who, something's not working, or they didn't get the right thing and they're already elevated in their anger and they're having to interact with an employee to try to get it resolved. So there's similarities, but there also may be differences based on that context of, you know, someone's hungry versus someone's not. Yeah. So what can industry leaders do with this information then? Yeah.

So what I think this helps highlight is two things. One, you're going to have a unique context. to your store because your store is nested within its specific community, which is nested within its specific state. And all of that creates a backcloth of variation in what your employees and customers are experiencing in your stores. So if LPRC, for example, was operating in Los Angeles, California, our backdrop would look very different than us operating in Gainesville, Florida.

So it's good to understand that there can be differences in that fear of victimization and it's good to look out for as well. And what likely might signal that is think about what is being portrayed on the media, because that's also what employees are often experiencing. But also think about what are some common incidents that are happening in your specific store. So your store in Los Angeles might have very different victimization than a store operating in Gainesville. So really think about the context of that store to better understand where might be those

triggers for fear of victimization. But the other moral of this story is that if we look at the very end of the RTP, I do state that yes, there were statistically different, significant differences in some of those preferences, but what wasn't statistically significant were their top three preferences, meaning that regardless of store type, most people want live video security. monitoring on-site security guards or alarm systems in some capacity. There was one difference in convenience stores where they did prefer panic buttons as well within their top three. And it could be because of what I was mentioning before, they might be on shift

by themselves, and so that might be a technological way to simulate having backup as opposed to having another person in that store. I don't know. It would require a little bit more deep dive. But again, it does highlight that yes, the top three are often going to be the same, but it might be good to look into some of that nuance of why there might be that variation dependent on the type of store as the context for your employees. Yeah, and that plays back into what you said, the fear of victimization is much different than actual victimization. So I think that was pretty valuable to take from that as well. And it's important to look at them separately because even if your store is not being victimized often, right? Or maybe your store doesn't have a

lot of incidents. If you have fear of crime, it might increase turnover within your employees, right? And so we are going to want to investigate that as well. We do have some items in the survey to better capture that as well. So it's not something to ignore, right, but they are distinct things, even if they might be related to each other. Yeah, and that is, I mean, on a financial side, that's valuable, invaluable as well. And those are things you can measure. too. So that's also really important is you can do employee climate surveys to feel like, hey, how do you feel in your stores, things of that nature? And you can include items such as, you know, fear of victimization. And that might help you predict, hey, this person has a high fear

and it's different from, you know, maybe last quarter. Maybe we should look into some kind of intervention for them so that we can retain them as an option. Yeah. In this survey, this study will definitely should be a resource for things like that. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Christina, for joining us. I really appreciate your time. I think that this has been a great review of your report. For those who are listening,

if you are interested in reading the full report, please visit our Knowledge Center or our website, LPRsearch.org. And you can find more information there. Thanks so much. Thanks again. Bye, everyone. Bye.

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 Lott's Prevention Research Council.