LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 218 – Research2Practice Recap Ft. Dr. Justin Smith

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, Dr. Cory Lowe speaks with Dr. Justin Smith about his latest LPRC Research2Practice (R2P) Report centered around ink tags. Dr. Smith talks through the project design and some of the critical opportunities and improvements with the technology. This is the first of many R2P Recaps, and you won't want to miss this one!

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. My name is Corey Long, the Director of Research at the LPRC, and I'm joined today by Justin Smith, Dr. Justin Smith, I should say, who has just released a report on ink tags doing work with self reported offenders. Justin, you've just recently released this research to practice report where we're taking research and making it applicable to what

retailers are doing. What motivated you to study ink tags in retail loss prevention? Yeah, Corey, that's a great question. So I currently oversee our product protection working group. and we had some retailer interest in this one. So we had a couple of retailers. One was curious to know, just is there any additional benefit to using ink tags above and beyond the just standard EAS style tags that they were using? And then we also had a second retailer that was interested in

and possibly using ink tags for other use cases. So ink tags typically, we think of them in relation to apparel. You know, you might see an ink tag on a pair of pants or, you know, a t-shirt or something, or probably not a t-shirt, but a shirt or something, you know, a nice shirt or something in a store. But this particular retailer wanted to know how they might work with bedding, which I thought was an interesting use case I hadn't heard before. So part of that, they wanted to know what offender perceptions were on ink tags.

And I should mention that we interview offenders anyway as part of our offender recruiting an interview program. And we have a portion of that where we show them about 40 different loss prevention solutions that are in the labs, including several different types of tags. And so it just seemed like a natural opportunity to go ahead and do some interviews around ink tags versus non-ink tags. Fantastic. Now, ink tags are interesting because they, we talk about statistics.

situational crime prevention at the LPRC very often. And the idea behind situational crime prevention is that to deter crime, you need to increase the effort required to commit a crime, increase the risk of committing a crime, so the risk of something negative happening. So, you know, feeling shame, being shamed in the community, or, you know, experiencing some kind of correctional consequences, whether that's probation, jail, prison, whatever that might be.

And then there's also reducing benefits of crime. And in this case, the ink tag satisfies a couple of those. Could you tell us more about situation of crime prevention and how eight tags fit within that? Yeah, absolutely. So situational crime prevention suggests that you can prevent or deter crime by increasing the effort, increasing the risk and reducing the reward or the benefit. So a lot of tags just not, we'll take the non-ink tags, the non-ink tag variant. They are, they increase the effort

to shoplift because they're very difficult to remove. Also, a lot of, again, non-ink tags are compatible with electronic article surveillance or EAS. So if you try and walk out with them and the store is equipped at the AAS pedestals, there should be an alarm. We've also seen some types of tags that the tag itself will arm if tampered with too much. So that increases the offender's risk. But really, with tags that are not ink-based, the kind of prevented benefits stop there.

but ink tags work on that third element of reducing the rewards of the offense so the neat thing about ink tags is that an ink tag on an item of clothing for example will reduce will release ink if it is forcibly removed and so that ink does a couple of things it damages that item of clothing So if someone is, if their motivation is to steal it for personal use, certainly they're not going to want to wear an item of clothing that's now been stained with this ink. And also if they're motive, if you have an offender whose motive is to resell the item, that's really going to hurt and diminish the resale value. So the interesting thing about ink tags is, and they can work on the other two elements, right? So there are ink tags that are really difficult to remove. There are ink tags that are compatible with the AS, but then they also have this third element of reducing the rewards or benefit denial.

And again, that's the idea that you're reducing the gain that the offender might get from the crime and that now the item of apparel or the item protected by the ink tag is damaged and that will hurt personal use or resale value. Awesome. Great explanation there. I think the ink tags are really a really helpful example to help people understand cost, benefit, calculation and how that fits within the situational crime prevention framework. So, let's get to brass facts. What did you find in your research with offenders? Yes, I interviewed 38 self-reported offenders with history of shoplifting, and I showed them. three types of tags in the apparel section of our store. And two of the tags were EAS compatible, but otherwise just standard tags.

The third tag was an EAS compatible ink tag, but it was an apparent ink tag. You could see the ink on it. And I have a statement that I read to the effect. offenders. And the statement is, this solution would deter would be shoplifters. And then I asked them to rate on a scale from one to four, which, you know, one is strongly disagree, four is strongly agree, their level of agreement with that statement. And I repeat the statement for each of the tag types. And what I found was that out of the 37 offenders that we interviewed, the mean score for the ink tag was a little over three. So that indicates that they agreed with the statement that the ink tag was a deterrent. With respect to the two other types of tags, the mean score on both was about a two approximately. So what that means is that they disagreed with the statement that those tags were a deterrent. So in the final analysis and comparing all,

all three, the ink tag scores higher with respected deterrence. Excellent. Thank you for that. Now, you mentioned that you had the three tags that you were testing. As you do that, are you also going to those 37 and other solutions? Because you mentioned earlier that you're doing, there's about 40 solutions that you have as part of the self-reported offender program. Are you also doing that same questionnaire?

with those other solutions? Yes, I am. Yeah. So it really gives you the opportunity to compare the perceived deterrent effect across all these different solutions and make comparisons, which is pretty cool stuff. Now, this is some really good preliminary evidence, you know, suggesting that ink tags can have an effect on offenders.

Where do you want to take this research from here? So I think there's a couple different directions. One is I would like to do some more in-depth interviewing around it. So to be transparent, one of the, you know, to be transparent, one of the things about the offender survey is that this only allows us to collect just some basic, shallow, if you will, information about the deterrent value of different solutions. But I would like to go a little bit deeper than that. And so I'd like to interview offenders and understand more about their thought processes around ink tags versus non-ing tags. So, for example, some of them talked about the fact that all of the tags, including the ink tags, could be defeated with a magnet. And so I would like to talk more about different types of solution defeats.

and maybe, you know, if there is any variation in terms of how you might remove or handle an ink tag versus an non-a-tank tag. Also, I think another interesting direction would be different use cases. So, again, ink tags work on that idea of reducing the rewards or denying the benefit. But we see benefit denial in other areas of loss prevention. So, for example, there are some electronics like power tools and computer tablets that actually have to be activated at the point of sale in order to work. So I think what would be interesting in that case is to understand offender perceptions of those types of benefit denial. Now, I mean, the test would be a little bit different. you'd probably have to show them some kind of signage about that and get their feedback.

But again, just this basic idea of does benefit denial offer additional levels of deterrence and protection above and beyond just standard product protection. So I think those are some areas I'd definitely like to go into more with our offender interviews. What about store trials? Are you looking for retailers to do store? trials and other things to assess the impact on shrinking sales? Yeah, Corey, like you're speaking my language there. I am always open to doing store trials if there are retailers out there that are interested in kind of taking this research to the next level and do a store trial around ink tags

or around a benefit denial solution or do some comparisons between ink and non-ink. I'm open for it. One of the benefits of these interviews that we do with offenders is that it allows us to just kind of get some, you know, basic understanding about offender decision making. And, hey, is this a potentially a viable solution? And then if it is, let's take it to the next level and let's go do a test and see how this actually works out in the field. So absolutely, I would implore if there's anyone in our audience, a retort. Taylor, you know, that's interested or a solution partner that's interested in doing some more advanced testing around this. Absolutely. Please reach out. Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Justin, for joining us today. It's been a fantastic conversation. I look forward to speaking

with you further in the future on this podcast. So thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for me on. I appreciate it. presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at LPresearch.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.