LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 115 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

A Brief Look at the LPRC IMPACT Agenda! Supply Chain Protection Summit a Success! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the most likely times for shoplifting, a look at research on shrink for years of recession, Messaging Software has a huge data security issue, the use of Facial Recognition technology, and a look into overstocked inventory risks. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 115 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

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. All right, welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast from the LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series. I'm joined by colleagues Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And Diego's back from the LPRC Supply Chain Protection Working Group's annual summit in Philadelphia. And we'll mention that upcoming here in a minute. And I'll just very briefly touch on the COVID situation, the pandemic that we've got right now, just because, again, it's dangerous, but also clearly inhibiting and affecting just

about everything that we do around the globe in not so good of ways, so many negative ways. And so right now, though, I continue to keep an eye on what's going on from the clinical front, you know, what type of human clinical trials going on, what types of vaccines are being looked at to reduce the spread, you know, done a super job with reducing disease seriousness. So, you know, there are now 123 vaccine candidates in human clinical trials. Now they're over 50, I mentioned last week, in phase three. So we should start to see quite a few more options pouring out as far as how they work, their mechanisms of action, if you will, but how they're administered, right? but how they're administered, right? We talked about through nasal mist and through patches and as well as injection, just different modes of administration that are on the way to look at

that. And looking at the therapy side, you know, the idea that there are over 700 new COVID therapies, another key part of this, that people can get infected fine if there are all kind of recovery therapies available, particularly those that are tailored for many of us in the population or those of us in the population that might have some kind of particular vulnerabilities. 700 in development right now. One thing that's interesting, too, though, is that to date, over 460, closing on 500, have been reviewed by the FDA and not approved. They're still, maybe go back to the drawing board, make these adjustments, or no, it looks like. And there are only 13 that have emergency use authorization so far, and two that are fully authorized. So, we're talking about 15 therapies out of, at this point, almost 500 that have been reviewed. So it's the, this virus presents a pretty high bar and they're approaching it from at least six different modes of action. We've talked about the DNA or, you know,

that sort of genetic as well as proteins and all different modes that they operate on. So it's a, proteins and all different modes that they operate on. So that seems to be a tough mountain to climb. But with over 700 more in development by, you know, some leading scientists and physicians in the world, you know, we need to be optimistic. And again, so many of these vaccines and therapies that are in development, being developed, even those that are not authorized for use currently for this look like they could be repurposed and adjusted, adapted, modulated for myriad other pathogens that are out there. So, you know, that's the positive part coming out of this. So, going over now to LPRC, we're going to talk just a minute about the Supply Chain Protection Working Group. I did not

have the opportunity to get there. The pleasure to be there. Heavily attended by multiple retailers and some leading solution partners hosted by TJX and one of their distribution centers. And I know that Orion and I know that Diego worked a lot, a lot on pulling together research, pulling together guest speakers, pulling together the co-leaders and working on jointly on a lot of different research opportunities. There had to be more content at this summit than ever before. A lot more interaction and exercises that were designed to do just that. And I got nothing but fantastic feedback, really, from the retailers covertly sending me photos and comments that were all very positive throughout the event. So I want to thank both Orion and Diego and the leaders

and the co-leaders of the Supply Chain Protection Working Group. That's a robust, that's a creative, innovative bunch. It's growing. Everybody's got a supply chain. And with almost 70 retail corporations in LPRC's community, you can see the opportunity to collaborate with the best and brightest and with organizations like Procter & Gamble funding some cutting-edge research with us and be able to collaborate with the ISCPO, with RELA, with the National Retail Federation, you know, with the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, with FMI, the supermarket group, and so on. You know, it's a powerful coalition, energized and enabled by a research team here at LPRC. So more and more and more to come on the supply chain protection front.

Going over to impact, which is obviously always important. It's a big aiming point for our organization and has been, it looks like, since 2003. And so right now we've got the agenda. Diego worked hard and got out an agenda at a glance for everybody to get an overview, to set travel, to register. But the detailed learning lab sessions are now confirmed. We've made changes here. And they're an example being we have some really good sessions that we have ready to go. We'll just move them to other events, to webinars and things like that to continue to make room if we have something really good. An example, again, is

coming from the Supply Chain Protection Working Group, where there was a session everybody was raving about on applying situational crime prevention, rational choice, routine activity to the supply chain. And so you're going to see that that session has now been activated and we moved another one into the reserve category. So what we did was put out at a glance. And on October 3rd, that Monday, you're going to see day one is when everything starts. Now, for most of the participants in LPRC Impact, things really kick off at 5 p.m. Eastern on that Monday, October 3rd, coming in for people to register, to meet and greet and see people they haven't seen, even seeing other humans for so long. I know that now other events have been open or are happening or going to happen, but this will be our

first impact since 2019 in person. We had a fantastic 20 and 21 virtual events. So 5 p.m. to 8, we've got our evening reception and registration and our lab tour. So it'll be at the UF Innovate Hub building. It has tons of parking. It is campus, but it's off main campus. And it's right co-located for those of you that have come in to prior impacts from the old lab building we had across the street at 305 building. Now we've got our six physical labs inside the Innovate building, including the parking lot lab in there. We've got our virtual area development area, AI development area in there. And then of course, the four square blocks outside environment are layered with all types of protected technologies, flashing lights everywhere.

So we'll be having receptions inside and outside the building. We're going to have the it's just going to be a really neat event, an opportunity to visit. But going back for those that are on the LPRC's Board of Advisors, the BOA, for those that are on the LPRC's Innovate Programs Advisory Panel, we've got a few things for them. But we'll go first to 7.30 a.m. on Monday, that October 3rd. There's our annual LPRC's Impact Affiliate Charity Golf event going on, a tournament. It'll be at the Ironwood Golf Country Club as normal. And so we expect a pretty robust turnout. They'll be there from 7.30 to noon. Our vice chairs for the BOA will be gathering at 1 p.m. for the vice chair meeting. These are invitation only. The vice chair, obviously, you know who you are because there's a chair and four

vice chairs. From 1.30 to 2.30, there's a board of advisors meeting for all of our BOA. It's one of the two annual gatherings we have. We have the other Ignite conference in the late February, early March timeframe every year, in addition to our team's calls. So then coming up at 3.30 till 4.55 p.m., we've got LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel meeting, as well as we've got the Strategy at Session coming up. So you're going to see a robust panel of what looks now to be 32 major retailers, each one selecting two people from their organization, each retailer to serve on that panel. So they're always represented, their voice is there, maintain a significant beyond quorum capacity. And then the sponsors, the innovate partners, as we call them, they're full members of the panel and they're the ones that enable top-notch cutting edge innovation through

providing their critical resources. So they'll be meeting then. And then, again, adjourning after that and going into the evening reception. And that strategy out this year, we've got Jamie Craft from the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. He leads the innovation and entrepreneur programs at the University of Florida in the College of Business. He's a fantastic, not just speaker, he's a facilitator, particularly around human-centered design thinking. In other words, creative thinking, applying that to problem solving.

So this is for the ones and twos, if you will, the pyramid heads from the retailers that have their invite to that. And then who they are developing as their number two in the organization, if you will. So, exciting first day going on. The following day on October 4th, on that Tuesday, we kick off for real impact, if you will, starting at 7.30 to 8.30 a.m. There's a registration again and breakfast for those that weren't able to register the evening before. And by registering means you get your name tag and your packet of information and things like that. Everybody registers online pretty much. And we've got record enrollment already happening right now. So there are 450 humans can fit in to Impact. So those of you that are members that have not registered yet, I would are if you serve on the board of advisors, if you sponsor a session or parts or different parts of the impact conference, and those SP solution partners can get more people depending on the tier that they're in. The main stage guest

speaker starts at 8.45 a.m. We've got a main stage event at 9.45. We have our first solution center experience. And that's an area where all the SPs, the solution partners that have new cutting edge or they're integrating or they're working on a project, they're there to help sponsor and showcase what they're doing as well as what track they're on. Is it theft? Is it fraud? Is it violence? Is it safety? The track is critical. And then you can have a solution that can affect more than one track. The same thing with zones. What zone is it from one, two, three, four, five, or combinations of zones to always fit into the context, the framework that we have at the LPRC. So that's a great experience from 10.20 to 11.45 a.m. on that Tuesday, the 4th of October.

We've got lunch for one hour with some neat things happening during that lunch as well, but it's from 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern main stage. There'll be things going on. We've also got two different main stage events that we'll have. Really cool. I won't go through the exact content just this moment. We then are going to peel off into the learning lab breakouts from 2.30 to 3.20 and 3.30 to 4.20. So you'll see two rotations. We're going to head back over because we're going to build on the through the day back over to the solution Center. And in there, you'll see that we start going through the solutions, tying them into what we're doing, getting to meet and greet.

And throughout the two days, really, of impact events, it's one of the only places in the world you'll see where solution partners, retailers, scientists, law enforcement executives, others are side by side, elbow to elbow throughout the entire event through all the content the social as well as the solution experience so we'll have the mad scientist gamification going on throughout impact an opportunity to to go and experience everything rack up points and get things that have been donated and things like that but it's also just kind of fun to go through and gamify the experience, leveraging the Mad Scientist program. And then we'll go over to the Champions Club at the University of Florida's Swamp, the stadium, the football stadium that holds 95,000 people on game day.

But LPRC takes over the Champions Club level for tailgating events. One of the favorites every year, live Southern rock music, barbecue, the best barbecue in town, open bars and all kind of things. But it's just another place for everybody to talk about the day, meet and greet. A lot of people get back together every year and so on. So that's that full day. We roll in the next day to the networking breakfast on day three, October 5th, that Wednesday morning. Again, another great opportunity to network with each other. We've got a day one review and day two kickoff. Quick, quick 15-minute brief by leadership and tying things together. That's what we're always trying to do, that there's a flow, there's a context, there's a

method to the madness here as we all get better together at safeguarding vulnerable people in places against all the theft, fraud, violence that everybody's dealing with. We go into the main stage from 845 to 945. We've got some pretty neat content there. Our next Learning Lab breakout rotation is from 945 to 1035. We then head back to the Solutions Center to tie back up and tie in to what's been going on and then roll over to the Learning Lab breakout for some great things happening there. We've got – we then head into lunch, which is a brown bag working lunch. And so it's always a good learning experience. And you'll see at LPRC Impact,

a lot of what we do in academia at these types of scientific conferences where you have posters that have been put up showing research in addition to what the content is on stage during the breakouts. And so that's a great way to move around and learn in a very quick manner some of the research that's going on. And so you'll also see these lunch and learns that are very popular and happen all every day just about on campus here at UF and other institutions, research institutions, where you go through and learn from each other. You take turns explaining what research you're doing or difficulties you're having. So that all takes place here. We'll then head into our last main stage content. They've got some pretty cool stuff lined up. Closing remarks and awards. We've got awards for

the new fellows, announced some new board of advisor members, the working groups and individuals and enterprises, organizations, members that have been the most participatory and supportive in growing out what we're doing and getting done at the LPRC. And then those that are interested can head back over to the labs for more in-depth tours, some brainstorming, just kind of absorbing it all, thinking about what they would like to do and how they'd like to leverage LPRC, leverage the laboratory ecosystem, the scientists, the six scientists that are here and beyond. And those that are interested too, annually, we head over to Ballyhoo Restaurant, an old-timey restaurant here in Gainesvilleville where you can see, you know, faculty and coaches and players and all kind of students and parents and everybody else, local yokels in there. And so we have the annual Ballyhoo dinner from 5.30, 8.30. And that's come

as you are and just hang out for those that have a late flight or are leaving the next day. But that's LPRC Impact in a nutshell. Let me kind of now head over to Tony, and let's catch up on what else is going on in the world, Tony, if you will. Thank you very much, Reid. And that looks like a really action-packed agenda at Impact, and I'm looking forward to it. So this week, I want to focus on my part two of a two-part series on retail crime. The question that, again, I asked in part one that I continue in part two is retail crime out of control. In part one, just to refresh, I cover the latest crime statistics, including the impact of the pandemic and the recent trends on increased violence. In part two, I profile what I'm going to share with you today is a profile of the criminals and their

preferences. I also explore crime scenarios when inflation and recessions are in place. And finally, I summarize some thoughts in terms of whether retail crime is indeed out of control and what we can do about it. So let me start with some profiling of those thieves and what do they look like. So a majority of retail theft is caused by adults, with 75 percent of all shoplifters being over the age of 18, while only 25 percent of those shoplifting are juveniles. Sixty percent of shoplifters have visited two locations of the same retailer, which means they were casing the location to see which one would be easier to steal from. About 55 percent of all shoplifters began

stealing when they were teenagers. Only one out of every 100 shoplifters are around, and a survey found that about 48 percent of shoplifters were repeat offenders. Interesting this, that one estimate indicates that the U.S. has, are you ready, 27 million known shoplifters. But out of that group, only 3% are professionals. 72% of kids and 73% of adults said the decision to steal was made while in the store. In other words, it was not a premeditated act most of the time. Winter is the biggest season of theft, with 81 percent of retail theft during this season occurring especially around the holidays. Wednesday through Saturday

are the peak times when retail theft is likely to occur. One of favorite chart that I look at every year actually appears in the Hayes International Theft Studies. In that study, they ask 19,000 randomly selected applicants for retail jobs, and these are really honesty tests, so they give them some honesty tests. Of those, just over 19 percent, think about that, nearly 20 percent of those that they survey or give these honesty tests to, they were considered high risk due to their admissions of previous wrongdoings or attitude towards honest and dishonest behaviors. I encourage you to look at the article, which is the actual article, which is on either LinkedIn or on my website, TonyDenoffery.com, for some of the answers in terms of what these high-risk folks

will admit to. But more importantly, these high-risk folks steal a lot more. High-risk job applicants are responsible for theft at about $700 compared to about $60 for the average low risk, which equates to nearly 12x the loss. The top three items favored by retail teams are designer clothes, laundry detergent, and razors. Retail thieves are designer clothes, laundry detergent, and razors. Now, moving on, what does inflation and recession do to retail crime? Again, there's a great chart in the article itself that's difficult to describe on a podcast, so go look at the article in terms of historical trends, in terms of what happened in history and retail crime patterns. in terms of what happened in history and retail crime patterns. I actually cite the Bloomberg article in that article, and there it says that the last time consumers were under severe strain in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis,

I mean rampant job losses and spikes in prices for food and fuel, shoplifting surged. Another analysis from Western Europe, researched by Joshua Banfield, found that shrink decreased from 1.45% of sales in 2002 to 1.23% in 2006, but it rose quickly in 2007 during the Great Recession onwards, reaching 1.39% by 2011.

And if you go back in history even further, similar trends emerged in the 1970s when inflation and unemployment took hold at the same time, which was called the area of stagflation, crime rose. Inflation, not general economic hardship, appeared to be the culprit behind rising crime. And post 9-11, retail theft skyrocketed by 16 percent and by 30 percent during the 2008 recession. And then multiple other research papers pointed to the same conclusions, inflation and hard economic times, increasing crime in general, and this includes retail theft. And then finally, what I concluded in this article, what are some of the solutions?

And the first thing that I'd mention is that, go back in history, when was the actual first recorded theft or shoplifting event in history? And it actually occurred in the 16th century in London. But my guess is retail crime has been going on ever since we've had markets. In a 2001 massive study of over 40,000 Americans, it found that 10% had a lifetime prevalence for shoplifting and 11% had done it. 10% and higher of the percentage of American teenagers who have tried cocaine or used methamphetamines. Retail losses for theft are costly on multiple levels. For every $330 worth of products stolen, a retailer needs to sell, are you ready, an incremental 300,000 worth of products to break even.

And for every dollar recovered, nearly $12 is lost to retail theft, meaning that only nearly 8% of total theft losses ever result in a recovery. And the pandemic was not kind to retail crime. In fact, a Wall Street Journal article cited a CBS spokesman that indicated that the company's drugstore experience a 300% increase in theft since the pandemic started. And then talking about organized retail crime, today ORC is leading to more bracing and more violent attacks in retail stores throughout the country. Many of the critical rings orchestrating

these thefts are also involved in other serious criminal activity, such as human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking, and more, tackling this growing threat as important as safety of store employees, customers, and communities across the country. So, in summary, what I see is that retail crime threats are real, they're more visible, and they're also getting more violent, as I said in part one. I do believe that next generation loss prevention solutions need to step up their pace in challenging this growing problem. And I think the LPRC is a good place to do a lot of the experimentation. I also believe, and this I agree with NRF, that we need to increase legal boundaries around what could be considered controversial technology, for example, such as race recognition. Even the Internet has become a market and is breaking down borders where stolen goods can be sold.

And in fact, in the NRF survey, over six in 10 retailers believe and agree that an organized retail crime law is required to address the challenges with the professional thieves. This stuff continues. At July, and this is just last month, at July 2022, Time magazine headline said, U.S. crime is still dramatically higher than before the pandemic. And it was a reminder that, in my view, police departments are overwhelmed, and we need to help them. So, supported by technology, strong partnerships are required between retailers, law enforcement, industry groups such as the LPRC, solution providers,

and the federal government to address the ever-changing threats. And then I also believe that increased loss prevention education is also part of the success made. So as I open with an image in the article, this is going to take a partnership to address. LPRC is going to play a big role in terms of this. But I also ask, based on all the ideas that I presented, this is my view. What's been your experience? What do you think is retail crime out of control? And what should be some of the potential solutions? Again, you can find both part one and part two on my website, tonidonofrio.com or on LinkedIn. And it's a good research base to have a discussion in terms of what we do next, especially here at the LPRC.

And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Thank you, Tony. Really interesting stuff, and you'll probably hear a couple overlapping things. And I'll start off with just some cyber risk, just a couple things that are going on today that are hitting the headlines. The popular social media, I'm sorry, the popular social The popular social media, I'm sorry, the popular social work app Slack. So it's really a collaboration app similar to Microsoft Teams or any of the other ones that are out there. Just recently announced that for the past five years that they were releasing hash passwords in error. error and what that basically means is hash to is a way to not necessarily encrypt but code passwords so that they're not easy to reverse so a hash is very easy to create and not as easy to work backwards and the way this was happening is through some invitations it appears a low

percentage of users were affected yet it was over a long period of time. During the invitation, the hashed OAP password was passed out. Quite trivial to an experienced person, but the average person probably would not be exposed. The data was protected in SSL, so it was encrypted, but if someone was looking at internet traffic they would see this hashed code and be able to basically work backwards to potentially get a password. I always say that you know some of these leaks or information that is lost it's what's the risk? Here the risk is is greater than some others because it is, while it's difficult, it is somewhat trivial for an advanced person to be able to go back and do this. Slack has taken the approach to reset

passwords. It continues to remind us the importance of using a two-factor methodology, whether it be app-based or SMS-based. I can't stress enough how while this is not foolproof, nothing is foolproof. But by doing that, it allows another layer of protection to alleviate some of these things that happen. And as we talk about on the podcast, these type of things happen daily, even with the largest, most sophisticated technology companies in the world. So anything you can do to add extra protection obviously helps. Additionally, we continue to see these type of challenges because the adoption of technology post-COVID like this, this social collaborative work technology has really taken over. And I continue to remind folks in the past

few months, we've had major outages with these services and companies have been somewhat crippled. Teams goes down for a few hours and people literally don't have people's phone numbers. So it's always important to not forget the way we used to communicate by picking up the phone call and dialing the phone number. I know that COVID has actually allowed some of that to reoccur, but we are in a society where we text and send messages. And if we are tied to a specific platform, it causes a business resiliency risk that we often don't look at. Speaking of facial recognition, Tony just talked about it. Speaking of facial recognition, Tony just talked about it. There was a really interesting story that hit out last week all over the news where Louisiana reversed its ban on that there needs to be some guardrails and some regulation, but simply just turning it off isn't necessarily the answer. So I know Tony mentioned that. I think we're going to continue to see these type of stories come up. I often have said for

many, many years, you're one or two major events away from the pendulum swinging the other way. major events away from the pendulum swinging the other way. When we're talking about the January 6th Capitol riots, facial recognition was heavily used to identify people. You don't hear about it as much, but in the news, that is one of the things that occurred, and that was how people were identified by using that technology. I think oftentimes the media, not on purpose, does talk about some of the negative impacts. And I know even when we were at the LPRC, we had a guest speaker who used the word creepy in the facial recognition. These are the type of things that

create the challenges for the common person. but the reality is when the technology is applied correctly with regulation it offers a huge benefit a really one of the things at the lprc is really to look at that scientifically see if the benefit exists and i while we aren't lobbyists we obviously are involved in the technology side of it but i do see a trend throughout states that are banning to re-look at what that means for that. Additionally, we're seeing a huge trend in the northwest and the west coast where police departments are offering huge sign-on bonuses to get police officers back in place. Portland has two different sign-on bonuses that they just announced because they're having trouble hiring police officers.

So, again, that pendulum is swinging. Hopefully, we'll get back to the middle on that. Switching gears just a little bit in retail, we're starting to see a little bit of chatter around, again, kind of piggybacking off with what Tony said throughout a throughout both the open web and the dark web of retailers making cuts and what retailers now is the time to try to shoplift that. There are even some posts that I saw about overstocked retailers, retailers that have too much merchandise to lock up and therefore become greater targets. So I think that there is definitely chatter from the red chopper, the nefarious actor on the Internet today, talking about the potential with the recession, with potential cuts coming, how to approach retailers. And there's even some chatter about what retailers have changed their rules to go back to a more aggressive

apprehension stance. I thought it was very interesting that when I was reading over the weekend, there were a lot of posts about some of the larger drugstore chains locking things up and saying, and there was actually kind of information of here's where you could go instead to get the same merchandise quicker so that you were so there is definitely some impact on that obviously we know that there's positive and negative effects when things are locked up but i think it's interesting that those things are coming up on the web and last certainly not least i think we will continue to monitor not least, I think we will continue to monitor some of the chatter related to potential civil disturbance. While I'm not going to talk about it much today because I don't have a lot of detail, there was an FBI raid or search warrant issued at one of President Trump's

residence, and there has been quite a bit of information on the web to talk about governmental type protests. At this point, I would say there are a lot of posts, but not a lot of clarity around what it is. I think sometimes with the internet, people voice their frustration and say things much like what we've talked about before on the podcast. When the Roe v. Wade piece came out, there was a lot of conversations that if you read them at face value, would lead you to believe that these folks were going to perpetrate violent acts. But a lot of times it's just frustration. There was a substantial, substantial amount of posts yesterday, several million posts that came out all at once talking about, you know, potentially

protesting and no specific mention of dates, times or things like that. But when these things occur, there is definitely a need for it. And we are in some parts of the country in an extremely, extremely hot environment and a long heat wave, which we know also during that time can impact the way people respond during these events. So we'll continue to monitor that here and activate the fusion net if needed. So stay tuned for that. And with that, I will turn it back over to Reid. All right. Thanks so much. A lot to digest there, Tom. And the same from you, Tony. Great insights, great in-depth reading and putting out what's so important. And I think

all this context is critical. And I did, I thought the January 6th comments were interesting and on point in that the technology is providing a way for people to identify offenders that are either initially offending or repeat offenders. And, you know, how do we just best leverage the technology to better safeguard people in places? And there are those people that are habitual high impact, high rate offenders that, you know, the best thing is to identify them, conduct thorough investigations with that information being part of it. And some of the investigators we've been working with lately, they constantly use a lot of cutting edge

technologies and tools, and they're taking out a lot of these high rate burglars, fraudsters, armed robbery crews. And, and now some of these shootings that are happening that are alongside the drug dealing and turf wars and things that are happening too, even in Gainesville. in turf wars and things that are happening too, even in Gainesville. Um, so these are some of these cutting edge technologies are going to better safeguard and protect people. We just need to do it with some guardrails as you talked about, Tom. Um, and what we'll do next week is talk a little bit about the research that we've been doing in depth, um, on the fear of crime victimization and what happens is an individual, any of us or our loved ones or us concerned about a loved one, if we fear that the probability of being victimized

by crime is relatively high, then that's something we might, that's a place or a place in time that might be avoided. And that's why you see places closing down we just saw that amazon is closing another ghost or in an area of seattle they've already evacuated also some office buildings that they own for their employees due to the fear of crime victimization um some of the actual some of it concerns and what we'll talk about with some of the research we're doing at LPRC and with the University of Florida's NSF team that I'm on called SafeCord is how even in the given relatively low crime rates or temporarily low crime rates in a given area, if there are certain features there that are very, the way we survived as humans over time is to survive and pass on our gene codes. And so things can become very basic and then become complicated. But the green actor, those

of us that are there to work or shop or deliver or other positive, licit place using that's supposed to be happening there, that all humans look at things like refuge and prospect and how refuge means, hey, is this a place that I could feel safe, go to, be protected, you know, that there's some kind of safety and security, whether it's in our bed, you know, or in a cave, or it's in a certain area of the parking lots, what we're looking at. And so what is somebody looking? Do I want to shop or work here quickly and subconsciously determine is there a safe area? Is this safe? Is this a place that I'm fairly protected? Or is there a place here that I could go to? And so on. The other part of that is prospect. How

well can I see if somebody good, but somebody not so good, a potential threat is coming my way. So refuge and prospect are psychological and probably genetic concepts that go back in time, but also blocked escape or ambush. Is this, could I get away if I go this way? Am I blocked or the way the offender is now moved over now could i be blocked and things like that you look even in ukraine with military these things come into play as they move around their battle space uh to defend or attack or uh counter each other so they're very basic concepts but they are hardwired we believe into humans and that's so think about

refuge and prospect and blocked escape on the red actor side, the green shopper, excuse me, on the green shopper, green actor side, the red, the same thing as they look for a place or a person to victimize, these things are subconsciously playing out in their head too. You know, is there what, how many targets are there? Are how many people that could notice and do something to intervene and so on? What are these things? So they're looking at prospect. How well can I see what I want to see and need to see, whether it's a target or it's a threat to me or my success and what I'm trying to do here?

How my escape? We know that that egress, that escape is critical. And there have been some really well done robbery, armed robber studies where they look at it's how much benefit or reward is there if they are successful in the robbery. And then the probability of getting away with it is the second top consideration. about how we're using virtual reality, VR scenarios, and eight different vignettes that we're putting a series of people. We've now put 47 human participants through, and we're finding out some pretty neat stuff. And it's not just interesting and things that we can publish in research journals, and it is, but these are things that we can do with dynamic and fixed features at different sites. So that's what LPRC is about. We'd love to see everybody come into Gainesville October 3rd through 5th and more of what we're

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