LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly R2P Review – Episode 230 Ft. Justin Smith, PhD

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, new host Tiffany Frison takes listeners inside the LPRC labs to explore research conducted directly with offenders. Learn how offender insights are helping shape smarter, more effective retail crime prevention strategies.

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, hello, hello, crime science podcast. I might be a new voice to you all as I am a new host, surprise of the crime science podcast. My name is Tiffany Fryson, and I am a research administrator here at the LPRC. And today I am joined by Justin Smith on our research team. Justin, how you doing?

I'm doing pretty good, Tiffany. How are you? I'm fairly well. So today we're going to be talking about one of Justin's recent R2Ps, and I'll just read it off here. The title is an introduction to the loss prevention research council's offender recruitment and interview program. So, Justin, why don't we start off and you just tell us a little bit about this research program

and kind of how this research is being conducted. Yeah, absolutely. So in January of 2025, so last year, I had to think for a minute because I'm not used to the fact that we're in 2026. So about a year ago, we began this offender recruitment and interview program. The goal of the program is to recruit and interview retail offenders, specifically shoplifters.

So we focus on people that shoplift from stores. And the goal is to interview them and get inside their head a little bit, understand how they make decisions with respect to how they target stores, what types of products they take, what theft techniques they use, what deterrence they look for when they're actually in the store or approaching. the store, whether they work in groups or solo, their motivations. We also are part of the questionnaire where we go into detail about offense history, prior arrests, convictions. We get demographic information. And then we also walk them around our engagement lab, which is the mock store that we have here at our lab in Gainesville, Florida, for any listeners that may be unaware.

We have it set up like a mock store and it's stocked with items that are high theft. Our retailers tell us are high theft items. And we have currently about 400 different crime prevention solutions. We show our offender interview subjects probably a good 40 or so different crime prevention solutions and get feedback on whether or not they would be deterred by those solutions. So in summation, it's a really unique opportunity to get inside the the mind of the shoplifter. Awesome.

Just as a quick aside, has anyone ever tried to steal anything from the engagement lab? That's a great question, Tiffany. And I'm going to be honest and say I don't know, but I would not be surprised. I do remember a specific instance, and maybe you will too, because I think you were there,

but we had a gentleman offer to break into anything in the lab. He was very confident that he could break into anything. And he said if we gave him a little bit more money, that he would go ahead and do that, which we did not do. Obviously, we didn't take him up on that offer. But I wouldn't be surprised if a few things have gone missing here and there.

Yes, I feel like I do remember that instance as well. anyway I just I just had to throw that in there um that's a great question I wish it was asked more often but it's a fantastic question um now okay so this uh R2P doesn't focus too much on the findings of the research uh thus far right um but is that something that you could speak on here and or refer uh people to other uh reports that are out there yeah absolutely so just to take a step back the reason I wrote this R2P is because I wanted to set the record straight just about what the program is, how we're recruiting offenders, how we get them to talk to us, and the types of information that we can glean from these interviews. However, in the past, I have written other R2Ps about specific solutions that we have asked the offenders about. So, for example, if you go to the knowledge Center, you can download some of these R2Ps. Offhand, I know that I recently published one about offender perceptions of PVMs. So, for example, we showed them two types of public view monitors.

So one was situated at the front entryway of the lab, so when you first walk in, and you might think about this when you see them in stores out in public, that they just, they face the front door and provide a view of everything going on in that front area or that vestibule. So we contrasted that with an in-isle pvm that only showed a view in the aisle. And one of the interesting findings there is that most of the offenders reported that the in-isle PVM was a bigger deterrent than the front entryway PVM. So we had some speculation about the reasons that may be the case. I've also published a couple of R2Ps.

One was on locking cases, and there are perceptions of locking cases and ways that they could defeat locking cases. there was also another one about their perceptions of EAS and just how much of a deterrent, just seeing the EAS pedestals is these days. And actually as we're talking, I thought of another one. There was a study we did with ink tags

and comparing ink tags with non-ink tags. Awesome. Yeah, and I think just like you're going off on some of those specific things that you've written about addition to this one. it kind of speaks to the volume and the resource that this program has that in just like in one interview with one person we can glean that much information on all of those different technologies and perceptions and everything yeah I don't know I just had that thought yeah absolutely the inspiration for the study, by the way, is when I was in grad school, I read a paper,

was a book actually, by Wright and Decker, who were to a criminologist that interviewed residential burglars, and they were interested in knowing what a burglary actually looked like, kind of through the burglar's eyes. So how they select neighborhoods, how they select houses, how they get into the house, what kinds of things they look for, and decisions about how they dispose of stolen property and so forth. And they interviewed, I want to say, about 120. 20 or so residential burglars. I wanted to try and approximate something like that, but with shoplifters, and that was really a big motivation for me to start this and just get as much information as possible, and also

standardized information. So we give every offender the same interview guide, and the goal there is so that we can build a dataset, and we can keep adding to that data set and building it, and maybe we'll be able to do some real sophisticated statistical analysis down the road to really kind of understand, or we can track trends, theft trends. I mean, there's a lot of ways we can build on the study. But there's just a wealth of information there. I feel like sometimes we've only really kind of scratched the surface.

Definitely. I would agree. Yeah, and I know I think you even note the Riten Decker research in this paper as well. Yeah, I thought I did. I talk about it all the time, and I probably mentioned it. anyone that knows me, he's probably heard me discuss it many, many times, but it's a fantastic study. Yeah. So anyone listening, if you wanted to read a little bit more about that, it's in this R2P. All right. So, Justin, this research we're doing weekly, you know, and how would you say this is useful to LPRC members? Like, what could they take away from this R2P specifically?

and the project in general? Well, I'll start with the project in general. The project in general, I think, is really good for retailers to understand how exactly it is people are stealing from their stores, what some of the more common theft techniques are, what the MO is of certain offenders, how they're using things in the store to facilitate shoplifting like carts and baskets. What kinds of things deter them, I think, is really valuable information just knowing what works to stop offenders. For example, we have questions in the survey about what has deterred you in the past.

Like, what has stopped you from actually shoplifting something that you wanted to take? I think another key takeaway in this whole thing is that it can lead to more discussion and deeper dives into different topics that our members may want us to cover. For example, I had a retailer ask me recently, what do you think offenders think about some of the new ORC laws and ORC legislation that's coming up? And I said, gee, you know, I don't know. That's a really good question. But I have an offender coming in next week. You know, maybe I could ask that person. And if it's something that you'd be interested in us doing a study around, you know,

we can build a pool of offenders and ask them those types of questions. It really helps to supplement a lot of the research that we're doing here at the LPRC. Also, with our solution partners, we are able to, show offenders prototypes of different solutions and get feedback on those solutions and how they can be improved to be more of a deterrent, how they work with respect to the Seaget Fear model and situational crime prevention. So in conclusion, I think for retailers, it's just a wealth of information about how people are victimizing their stores. And for solution partners, deterrence, what works, what doesn't, what can be improved. And for both groups,

It's a wealth of opportunities for future studies, future deep dives and the topics that they may want to discuss. Exactly, yeah. And in a few minutes here, we'll come back to that point of kind of other topics or interests that our members may have in this project and program. But I wanted to ask to, because you do know in here, Justin, about some of the limitations of the research. and one of them, for instance, being locality, you know, we're in Gainesville and stuff like that. So could you speak on the limitations and what we can still glean despite those? Yeah, absolutely. So any time you do a qualitative exploratory research study, one of your key limitations is going to be generalizability.

And basically, that's the idea that we're interviewing people. in a certain context. We're here in Gainesville, Florida. We're right on the University of Florida campus. So we're getting offenders that are local to this area that probably live here, that frequent stores in this area. So we can get a wealth of information from them, but it's not necessarily translatable to other locations. So, for example, I wouldn't feel confident taking the findings of our study and saying this applies to offenders everywhere. Right. Right. Or this applies to offenders in Brooklyn, New York, or, you know, San Francisco or, you know, any other city, really.

So that's a weakness that we have to be wary of. Another weakness is social desirability bias and just the fact that we're talking about. talking with a criminal population and they're not exactly known for being honest. So how do we promote honesty and get honest responses from the folks that we interview? Again, that's going to be a limitation any time you talk to an offender population. Wright-Deckel faced it when they talked with their burglars as well. So how do we mitigate some of these limitations? Well, the first thing is I always like to acknowledge limitations because no study is perfect.

And we want to be open and transparent about that. But I think we can deal with limitations. Generalizability, what we're trying to do here is really kind of get inside the mind of the shoplifters to understand how they think, how they make decisions. So we're not really necessarily concerned about whether or not these findings will be translatable to other locations, for example. You know, knowing how to remove an ink tag, for example, there's probably not going to be a whole lot of variation in that in other places. Right. Right.

Or knowing some of the basic motivations for shoplifting, there's probably not going to be a lot of variation, store selection, things like that. So from an exploratory qualitative research standpoint, we're really okay not being generalizable. One way we could get around this would be by replicating. the study in other areas. So if anyone does want us to go and interview offenders in Brooklyn, I don't know why I'm picking on Brooklyn specifically, but, you know, that would be another way that we could increase, you know, some of the validity of the work that we're doing here.

Social desirability bias, that's difficult to counteract. Probably the best way that I counteract that is, and you probably heard me give this spiel to offenders many, many times. We're not judgmental here. We are collecting this information. We're not affiliated with law enforcement. We're not collecting the information in a way that is going to hurt you later on down the road. We're relying on you as a source of information. That's why I'm talking to you. So help me to understand, you know, how it is that you think the way that you do and how you make the decisions the way that you do. So just really playing up that we're not being judgmental, that they're not going to get in trouble by talking to us, you know, and sometimes you just kind of have to read the room and play to their

ego a little bit, you know. I'll never forget. There was an offender that I interviewed probably a couple years ago before we started this program. And, you know, he was bragging about the fact that he would break into trucks. And, you know, he was seemingly proud of that fact. So my response to that is, dude, that's totally awesome. I've never done that before. Tell me about it. Right. Right. So you kind of feed into that ego a little bit. So some of the ways you can get around the limitations, but they're always going to be there. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome.

Thank you for that, Justin. Now, we are almost at time, but I did want to ask this question because I think it would be very entertaining for our listeners. So, Justin, what is one of the most surprising things someone's ever said in an interview? That's tough to boil down because we've heard a lot of interesting things since we've been doing this project. Probably one of the more memorable stories that I go back to is I was interviewing a gentleman who told me that his greatest ambition in life was to rob a bank. But that he had never been able to do that because he'd never found anybody that was as serious about it as he was. So when I talk with the offenders, a lot of times I kind of try and make them comfortable and try and find like situations. in my own life that I can relate so I can show them and be like, yeah, man, I know,

I know what you're talking about. And so when he said that, I mean, you know, I was a bit taken aback, but I was also like, how in a heck can I relate to that? Yeah. And so I started thinking about situations in my own life. And one thing that I like to do is I'm a runner. And I was actually training for a half marathon at the time, which was true. I'm certainly not going to lie to anybody. But I said to him, you know what? I think I know what you mean because I really am training for this half marathon. I really enjoyed running. But I run alone because I've never really found anybody that is as serious about it as I am

and that has the same goals that I do. So I get it, man. I get where you're coming from with that. So you never want to throw off a bank. I get it. Awesome. Well, this has been quite riveting. and I hope everyone listening has enjoyed this conversation.

One last thing before we go, though. I did want to come back to the point about any ideas or interest anyone has in this project and program. So, Justin, if anyone has an idea or a question or something they want us to get data on from the offenders that come through, what would be the best thing for them to do? Probably the best thing to do would be to reach out to me.

You can shoot me an email directly. Fortunately, at the LPRC, our email addresses are very easy to remember. My email is Justin at LPresearch.org. That's J-U-S-T-I-N at L-P-Research.org. And just let me know what's on your mind. We're always looking for opportunities for more interviews, more studies, and absolutely I'd be happy to ask any questions within reason. Yes, of course within reason. Awesome. Well, I think that is it for today, everyone.

I just want to say thank you again, Justin, for being on here today, and thank you to all of our listeners, and congrats for making it this far if you made it this far. And then I will just note that this report and all the other research that we've talked about today is on our knowledge center, so make sure to go there and check everything out. And then let us know if you have any questions. Justin and I are here all the time, you know, 9-5, Monday through Friday. And we will see you all or catch you all on the next crime science podcast. Have a good day, everyone.

Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Lost 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.