LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 212 Ft. Basia Pietrawska

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, Cory Lowe speaks with Basia Pietrawska, a long-time leader in loss prevention and criminology. They discuss Basia's background, growth in the industry, and her academic pursuits. They also look at the growth opportunities for the industry, and they delve into her new roles within it, including supporting the LPRC.

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, good evening, everyone, depending on where you are. My name is Corey Lowe, I'm the director of research at the LPR. And I'm joined by Basha Petroska with Lauer's Risk. Basha, welcome. Thank you, Corey.

Thank you so much for having me. It is very good to have you. It's been a great, it's been great working with you for all these years, and it's great interviewing you today. And you recently became a research fellow with the LPRC. And we'll talk about that in a moment, but can you tell us just a little bit about your background and how you got in to this field? Absolutely.

So fun fact about me, I was actually. originally a pre-med sort of major in path. And one of the reasons for that was I always loved problem solving, identifying a problem, diagnosing a problem, and working on a solution, which made a lot of sense in terms of the medical field. And I always like to help people. I know it's the sort of cliche, but that is a big part of it. But for whatever reason, when I started my studies at an international university in Germany, within a few months, as I got to know different professors and different students and really explored a little bit of criminology. It really was a great foundation in terms of understanding human behavior, sociology side of things,

and really then taking that to the next level and applying that into problem solving when it comes to crime. So I did find that to be a really great way to just do something different and something you need. That's kind of how I've always been. and I'd never wanted to be on just the, you know, obvious path, if that makes sense. Definitely. And then you ended up going to grad school, right? What did you end up doing there? Yes, so I ended up applying for a master's in criminology at the University of Pennsylvania,

and that's what brought me to Philadelphia, and I'm still here, which is really great. That master's was really amazing. It was a great program where, first of all, I got a lot of exposure to do criminology, but also law. We had to take some classes in terms of that area a little bit. And what I loved about that program was there was a lot of practical aspect to it. So it wasn't just theory. So just being in Philadelphia, Philadelphia is obviously a very interesting city and amazing city. But it has a lot of the good and the bad and a lot of high crime, high crime.

risk areas. So we actually got a chance to work on some real-life problems in the area, which I think was amazing to be able to take the theory and apply to what was going on around us. We even did a mock trial, which again gave me a little bit of that exposure to the legal world. So fantastic experience that allowed me to make a lot of great connections with law enforcement and also private companies and really opened up the world of criminology to me in terms of what one can do with that degree. It's not just becoming a law enforcement officer. There's so much more to it. So I loved it. And one last thing I'll add to it, which kind of ties back to the medical field. One of my professors that I will never forget was Lawrence Sherman,

amazing researcher, amazing professor, and he always talked about the analogy of criminology being kind of like a medical field where you're trying to diagnose the problem and solve it and treat it, which makes a lot of sense. So he really did push that angle a lot and really stuck with me forever. Yeah, and he's left just a huge mark on the field in so many different ways. I think around 2000, he came out with a what's work, what works book that really went through all these different programs and created a model for several different initiatives later on to assess the effectiveness of different programs. And that's exactly what we do at the LPRC except for with loss prevention. So definitely a huge person in the field. After that, you spend a lot of your career in the area of risk, risk assessment, risk modeling, all of that. Can you tell us a little bit about that area, that part of your career?

Yes, absolutely. So as I continue to understand the field of criminology a little bit better, I really wanted to focus on the proactive side. We know crime will always be there. That's not something we can eliminate, but we can get or continue to get better. at being proactive and preventative when it comes to that. And to me, being able to assess risk in an objective way, ideally using data rather than subjective perceptions, was key. So that's where I wanted to take my passion for the field of criminology,

but also passion for data. I love data and really understand the field of risk. But also keeping in mind that it's not all about data. You still want to be aware of perceptions out there in the field, and really not ignoring that subjective component. I think that's one of the number one lessons I learned very quickly when I started. So you just mentioned objective versus subjective assessments of risk. Can you talk a little bit about that and what would constitute a subjective assessment of risk versus objective?

So when you think about retail and associates that work in your stores, I think they are a wealth of information that unfortunately oftentimes is ignored. But when it's gathered properly, you have to account for that subjective perspective, right? So let's say someone is working at a high-risk location in an urban setting. They might be used to certain levels of crime and risk or losses. And maybe you definitely got someone who, let's say, works and lives in a low-risk suburban setting. So that's where that subjectivity comes into play a lot of it. That's one of many examples. but it's still, it's truly powerful because not everything can be realized in data, right?

So you want to find a way to combine the tool for this sort of full picture perspective. Yeah. Awesome. Now, you've been involved in risk for a very long time. Now you're with Lowers. Can you tell us a little bit about your role there? Absolutely. So with the role in Lowers, definitely in a way, staying on the risk path still.

I still want to stay on the proactive side of things, but what I really wanted to do in my next step was to go beyond the data surface of these issues and really get into some real-life applications a little bit more, have more of a hands-on approach. And I found a way to do that with Lowers through litigation, which is interesting and kind of brings me back to some of the things I did at Penn. by studying, analyzing cases in which a retailer, a bank, or a restaurant might be involved and really understanding what happened in the case or the incident itself, but also what security measures were utilized, how the training worked, how the employees understood the training really allows me to see what is effective or maybe not so much effective within security programs, which then I can take back to a client potentially

or an industry association or any kind of presentation to share some of those lessons learned, which I think is important. It's obviously an unfortunate position to be in to be facing litigation, but then on the other side, there's a lot of lessons learned for those involved, but also others who haven't been yet,

which there's always unfortunately a chance. Yeah, so you're talking about what works. That's kind of what we do at the LPRC, and you've been involved in the LPRC for many, many years now. In the lead up to this podcast, we were talking about how long you've been involved. And I didn't realize exactly how long it was that you were at some of those earliest meetings that, you know, that where they had the perception out at Reed's Farm and all of that. Always been very involved in the Von Krum Working Group.

And recently you became our distinguished research fellow at the LPRC. And we are very glad to have you and to be working with you. on violent crime still today. But can you tell us a little bit about your role as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the LPRC and what you're hoping to accomplish in that role? Absolutely. So I love the association.

Like you said, I've been involved for many, many years, way over 10 years at this point. I am so impressed with the growth that the association has gone through, and especially the aspect of providing a platform for collaboration between retailers, law enforcement consultants, academia, I mean, the list goes on and on, which I think is just absolutely amazing. So now being able to officially join as a distinguished research fellow for me is kind of like a cherry on top on top of everything that

I've been doing. And honestly, I want to continue to do that and take it to the next level. So with the violent crime working group, I am one of the co-leaders. So I do want to continue to to help shape the mission of the group, which will also hopefully feed into shaping the mission for the association. I think that's very important with these associations to, as we continue to grow and learn, to also take a step back, reassess, and think about, okay, what are our goals? What do members want? Right.

So that's what I want to do within this working group to help make sure that we stay on track, that we provide timely content. And let's face it, there's a lot going on when it comes to violent crime. time. So I want to make sure we stay focused and focus on relevant topics. And another thing I would definitely like to do as well is make sure that we can continue to provide actionable tools to the members. So presentations are obviously important. Educational sessions are important. But what I love about LPRC is a platform where we can also test an experiment, right? So we can look into these real life settings and conduct experiments, look at effect. of security measures, understand the perspective of the victim or of the offender. There's no other association out there that does it. I think that's what I love so much about LPRC because that is so unique. So I do want to continue to elevate that and utilize that to create tools, actionable tools that the members can then take back to their organizations

and apply lessons learned to hopefully prevent as many of these incidents as possible. Because like I said earlier, crime will always be there. These incidents will always be there, but we can continue to get better at the mitigation aspect, and that's what I want to do here. Awesome. It is great having you, and I'm looking forward to working with you as well. Now, another thing that you've spent a lot of time looking at over the years of crime trends and patterns, what are some of your greatest concerns right now in retail crime? I would say it's really, it's not just the traditional offenders that we always dealt with. It's not just the traditional violent crimes like robberies or assaults. We're definitely seeing an issue where both customers but also employees are just getting angry a little bit faster than they

used to. So we're just seeing a general increase in levels of aggression. And so that's something that is concerning. And I know we want to be focusing on de-escalation aspects of that, because that is key, and it goes way beyond physical security measures. So that is one trend that we're keeping an eye on, and it's not just in retail. It happens in other business sectors as well, which we can talk about later. Another one is ORC. Obviously, retailers are losing a lot of money, and those losses are increasing from one year to another. And the more concerning aspect to me personally associated with that is the violence that comes with that. They're getting more and more aggressive. We're seeing that in industry-wide statistics, we're seeing that working with individual clients. So that is another

concern. And what comes with that is also just the definition of these incidents and being able to demonstrate the problem. And where is that distinction between a theft and an ORC incident? we need to be keeping an eye on as an industry understanding better and focusing on the mitigation efforts collectively. Most definitely. I think that definitional problem has always been a huge challenge, in part because organized retail crime is something that's kind of an emergent phenomenon, as they would say, in sociology, where you don't really know what's ORC until you can actually get to an organized pattern of criminal activity.

And so I can look at a shoplifting attempt and say that looks like it might be ORC, but until there's an actual investigation, I can't record it as such. And that makes it very difficult. I think it's also difficult because different organizations experience organized retail crime differently. If I talk to a department store, they have a very different problem in terms of ORC than if I went over to a chain drug store. They have very, very different problems from other. retail segment. So can you tell us a little bit about your collaboration with other industries and you know, where you think there's there's some opportunities for those industries to inform what

retail does and opportunities for retail to inform what they do? Absolutely. So yes, working with industry associations is definitely one of my passions. I really genuinely enjoyed that because, again, it's a great platform to bring members together within that specific setting. But I think there's even more value in eventually the cross-industry perspective that I think is important as actually another thing I will continue to facilitate for LPRC by connecting LPRC with other associations. And working with the restaurant industry or with the banking or healthcare hospitality, honestly, a lot of the issues that they're experiencing are similar to what retail is seeing. It's just the consequences or the execution of them might be a little

bit different. So I think there's, first of all, there's a lot of overlap, but of course there's also differences. So what I like to see is where these different industry sectors come together in the same room to not only talk about what they're experiencing in terms of crime and laws, but more importantly, what mitigation strategies are they applying? Because that's where I feel like there is a lot of lessons learned from one to another in terms of training, in terms of physical security measures, and even collaboration. A lot of times when you think about a mall or a strip center or even a street in a city, a lot of these businesses are co-located. And these criminals, you know, travel from one to another. There are connections from gift card fraud to,

you know a retail location between a retail location and a restaurant in that perspective or there could be a connection to a bank when it comes to R.C or it could be a money laundering aspect or fraud aspects. So there's so many stories to tell from one business to another, either with a single incident or a trend of incidents that I think we're just not utilizing that and out for lessons learned. So I would love to just kind of take my experience with these different associations and really do bring them together because when you think about it, it's not about competition here. We're all working for the same goal. We're all trying to make the job for these criminals harder, and we can only do it if we come together. So I'm

going to try to facilitate that as much as possible with LPRC. And I know you guys are open to it, which again, I love because you're all about collaboration. Yes. And restaurants I'm particularly enthusiastic about not only because of the issues that they face with the theft and you know aggression and all of the the criminal issues but restaurants also have a lot of expertise and operational processes and process improvement and all of that so i think there's a lot a lot that retailers can learn from restaurants in those regards as well and i apologize for jumping in And even when you think about banks, in the past, bank robbery was at a much higher level, right? It seemed like an obvious target.

But over time, it dropped drastically. And what we started to see was a couple of things. Bank robbery is a federal crime. Average loss from a bank robbery is only about $2,000. So these criminals realized, okay, I could go to a convenience store next door. And that's an easier target, a lesser of a punishment. and also higher gain. I absolutely love that example of how strategies within one segment or one industry

could force crime to another area or displace crime to another area. And I think that's probably something we should all be paying a lot closer attention to. I really want to end. You know, you've had a long career, a long successful career. you know, I just want to end with some questions around advice for aspiring professionals and leadership principles. So, you know, when you look back at your career, are there any principles and your leadership principles that you've lived by that you think have contributed to your success that you would, you know, recommend to aspiring professionals in the field?

Yeah, definitely a lot of lessons learned. I love sharing. my experience with the younger generation because I really like to see people succeed. I really do enjoy the mentorship aspects of the career as well. And I think the mentorship piece is actually an important one. What I realized over the years, a lot of people go through their career without a mentor, a true mentor, not even realizing that. So I think as they navigate, as they enter this field, I think it's important to look for that and it doesn't necessarily need to be one person. It could be multiple people, but just the

pure awareness of having someone in that position is important. I personally didn't always have it, but then eventually I realized it was needed and it really helped me get to the next level a little bit faster. I think as far as leadership, it's important to learn to delegate and allow the people to do the work, if that makes sense. So you really want to be, and it's not easy because I've been there. I managed teams before I continue to manage teams, and I know it's not an easy thing, but as you learn to do that, I mean, the gain is amazing because you're not only gaining a lot of yourself, you're gaining time, it's a gift of time, but you're also empowering your

people to grow, and you need to learn to, you need to let your people make mistakes. that's how they learn. You can't just check everything they're doing. You can't fix everything they're doing. And of course, there is a limit in terms of mistakes, but you need to allow them to do that so they can learn and become better at their jobs, and that's how you build better teams. So that was something that took me a while to realize, but once they did, again, big change and allowed me to grow myself as well, which we always want to continue to grow. Most definitely. I think delegation is a very difficult

thing for me as well. I think part of it is this is just such a high stakes industry where if we make the wrong recommendations, there's real consequences for real people in terms of safety and a lot of other things. But I definitely can appreciate

your recommendation to learn to delegate and I'm learning that lesson slowly but surely. I think and one last a quick little tip for I guess the younger generation entering the field, what I would say, and this goes both for the employees, but also the leaders, explore and see what's out there in terms of initiatives you can get involved in.

And again, LPRC is a great example of that. What I see very often is people sort of staying within their day-to-day jobs and not trying to expand their horizons through these initiatives, through these volunteering opportunities. But honestly, that's what got me where I am, I believe, right now because it expands your network. It allows you to learn so much. And it really allows you to better connect the pieces. And for the leaders out there, if you have any concerns about your employees doing that or maybe taking them away from work, if it's done the right way in the right space, it's going to make them that much better in their job. So I do want to encourage that because I see a bit of a drop-off in that with some of the younger generations, if that makes sense.

And I think that's just, that's a shame because I think we want to see more of that it's better for everyone at the end. Yeah, some of the LPRC is doing more of this year. We're trying to get more junior leaders within organizations to some of our events, because we hear a lot of people talking about the talent pipeline in loss prevention. And then not being very robust. And then I look at the things that your junior leaders are able to participate in. Oftentimes, they're not given that ability to participate in associations and things like that. So if we want to fill that pipeline, that talent pipeline, I think we're going to have to give a lot of younger leaders more opportunities to get involved in some of these associations.

So I think you're spot on there. Any final parting words or advice that you would offer to any other people in the industry? I would say continue to collaborate and never miss an opportunity to talk to a new person when you're out there at a conference and a meeting. You never know where that one conversation is going to take you. I think that can really very often can really change a lot. And these things sort of add up over time. So just be open, be open to collaboration, be open to discussions. And I think that's pretty powerful in our community because it is such a great industry as long as you participate.

I think I couldn't agree more with that. There's a great classic sociology arc out there called the strength of weak ties where it really focuses on how powerful, you know, just making an acquaintance in life can end up connecting you to other people. within that social network that opens up a lot of opportunities. So, Basha, thank you for joining us today. It's been a fantastic discussion. It's always great working with you, and I look forward to working together in the future. So thank you once again, and thank you to all of our listeners.

Thank you so much, Corey, again, for everything that you do. Thank you. 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.