LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 244 Ft. Justin Smith, PhD (LPRC)

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

In this episode of the CrimeScience Podcast, LPRC’s Tiffany Frison speaks with Justin Smith, PhD, about a recent research report examining offender interactions with peg hook product displays. Justin also shares how he recruits offenders for research studies and why their firsthand perspectives are critical to understanding behavior and developing more effective loss 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 everyone and welcome to the LPRC's Crime Science Podcast. I am your host today, Tiffany Friason. And today we have our guest, Dr. Justin Smith, one of the three of the first of the research scientists here at the LPRC. Justin, thanks for being on today.

Oh, yeah, absolutely, Tiffany. It's great to be here. Always a pleasure. Awesome. And today we're going to be talking about, obviously, one of your recent reports. The title is, Are We Off the Hook? Shoplifter's Perceptions of Pegg Hook Solutions. That's a tongue twister right there.

Oh, I thought it was a pretty clever title, actually. It is clever. It is clever. But I don't know. I got my words. stumbled up today. All right. So this report is part of the

Offender Interview Program, correct? Yes, it is. Awesome. And just before we get into everything, like, how long has that program been going on, would you say? That you've been involved in it. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Because the LPRC has been interviewing offenders

for over 25 years. My involvement in the offender program started in, well, really, 22 when I joined the team, but the actual program itself, where we regularly interview offenders. That began in 2025 in January, so probably over a year. Okay. Very good. Awesome. Yeah, I just want to give people a little bit of context onto kind of what we're getting into here.

Now, so this report is on something very specific, but can you tell us a little bit about the project overall? Yeah, of course. So again, part of our offender recruitment and interview initiative where we recruit and interview self-reported shoplifters. So these are folks that have a history of shoplifting. And the whole point of these interviews is to get inside their head to understand how they make decisions about what stores they go to, what products they typically steal, what theft techniques they use, what they do with the stolen merchandise, what their perceptions are of different deterrents. And we also collect information about arrests and conviction histories, personal histories, and all that good stuff. for this particular project, our focus was specific to peg hook-based solutions. And I'll just mention just for our audience out there that may be unaware of peg-hooks.

Yes, thank you. I was going to ask. We're on the same page. Yeah. And I didn't even have that in my notes either. But so, you know, we've probably seen peg-hooks in stores. And basically it's when you have. merchandise that is hanging from a hook and you have to retrieve the merchandise

from the hook but there are different solutions that work to protect merchandise on peg hooks right so for example we see locks on the end of those peg hooks where someone would have to call an associate to come over and remove the lock to take the item off the peg hook right we have also seen um peg hooks with these cranks on them. And it's almost like a corkscrew spiral that you have to turn a knob to get the item to advance and then you can remove one at a time. Right. So anyway, peg hooks, interesting from a merchandising standpoint and a product protection standpoint, we were interested in knowing what exactly do offenders think about peg hooks. Do they view

peg hooks as a deterrent? And so we conducted the interviews as part of our larger offender recruitment interview initiative but for this particular paper I focused on the responses with respect to peckhooks. Gotcha. Perfect. And then we're kind of getting into it a little bit there but can we talk about maybe a little bit more in detail how this research was conducted? Yeah absolutely. So we recruited and we're constantly recruiting offenders. At the time that this particular paper was released, we had 50 offenders that we had interviewed at that point. We recruit offenders a number of different ways.

Primarily, we use online job finding websites where we post advertisements about the studies that we're doing. And we invite the offenders to come to our store lab here in Gainesville for the interviews. And then they receive a $50 gift card. In addition, we also use a technique called Snowball Sampling, and that is a technique where we get an offender in the lab, we interview them, we build a rapport with them, we get them to trust us, and we say to them, hey, if you have any friends or family members that do this, send them our way. And in this particular case, with this study, I showed the offenders three different types of peg hook solutions. Okay. And alluded to this a little bit earlier, but the first type was a locked peg hook. And we actually have this set up in our store lab.

Right. So the lock peg hook had some razor blades on it and then a lock at the front of it. So the only way to retrieve the razor blades would be to call an associate to come over, remove the lock, and then give you the blades. Then we also had a peg hook, which I'm referring to, to is a spiral crank peg hook. By the way, just like they say on Law and Order and Dragnet, names have been changed to protect the innocent.

We're not mentioning any specific solution partner names here or names of products. Very good. I don't want to do that. But we had the lock peg hook variety. Okay, that's the name I'm giving to it. Then we had a spiral crank peg hook. And this was a peg hook that, again, was like one of those corkscrews. On the end of it, there's a knob that you would turn and twist, and it would release

one product at a time. In this case, it was, again, protecting razor blades. So you turn that knob, it releases one razor blade packet at a time. And when you're turning that knob, it makes a ratcheting sound. And then there's also a beep sound when the product is ready to be taken. Okay.

And then the third type of peghook that we looked at was what I'm calling a time release peghook. And basically, this was a button that you'd push, and it would release one product, blocks off the rest, releases just the one, and then there's a delay of, I think about maybe 15, 20 seconds before you can push the button again. So three types of peg hooks. We showed the offenders these peg hooks and demonstrated them, had them play around with them. And then I read this statement to them, this solution would deter would be shoplifters.

And I asked them to rate their level of agreements with that agreement with that statement. Okay. Whether they strongly disagreed or strongly agreed. And then what we did is we computed the mean average across all 50 offender interviews. Okay. Wonderful. Now, before you steal my thunder, Justin, let's get into the findings because I know you're going there. We're getting into it now. So we've interviewed these people and what has been the key findings of this particular study?

So major takeaway, with respect to the three different types of peg hooks, only the locked peg hook was viewed as a deterrent by the offenders. So the majority of the sample agreed that that locked peg hook was deterrent. Okay. So that scored within the agree range on our deterrence measure. The other two solutions, the offenders disagreed that those would deter would be shoplifters. Okay. Very good.

Now, was anything surprising here in the findings? that like the lock peg hook was a deterrent, but the other two weren't was like, did anything surprise you about that? Yeah, definitely. I think you hit the nail on the head. The fact that the locked peg hook scored the highest, that was surprising to me. And the fact the other two didn't was also surprising as well. And then when you see a result like that, you're always kind of wondering why.

Right. What are the implications from a deterrent standpoint? Yeah. You know, why did the scoring work out the way that it did? Which I'm thinking might lead up to another question. I'm not going to steal your thunder a second time, so I'll let you leave with that one. That's great. That's great.

So with what we found here, how do you think practitioners or our members could use this information and what we've uncovered here. So I think there are three key policy implications from this study. They pertain to first theft techniques, second involvement of store associates, and third store layout. And I just, I like to use for a second third, but I'm not implying any kind of order. Right. So let me be clear about that. Yes.

But the theft technique matters. So when we think about what types of theft a peg hook solution is supposed to deter, one of the key use cases is that these peg hook solutions deter shelf sweep. Now, for folks in our audience that may not be aware of what shelf sweep is, it is a particular type of theft technique where the offender will go in and just take as many things as they can off the shelf and put them into a bag or into the card in just in one sweep.

Right. Right. And in this case, peg hooks are included in that as well. Yes. Right. So peg hooks, the beauty of peckhooks is that they deter shelf sweep activity. Because with the peg hooks,

one, with the locked peg hook, you got to call an associate's come over and give you the protected merchandise so you're not shelf sweeping that with the other two types of peg hooks those are self-service

but with the spiral crank you have to keep turning it and turning it and turning it it's making that ratcheting sound and you get that beep each time the product comes off so that will really slow

down a shelf sweep activity and it will also draw attention. Yes. Right? Exactly. And then the time release peg hook achieves the same purpose. You push the button, it releases it one item at a time, but then you have to wait the 15, 20 seconds before you can take something else. So you can't shelf sweep that either. So these peck hook solutions are really good for deterring shelf sweep. However, what's interesting, is that they're highly dependent on shelf sweep.

And there's other theft techniques that they may not be great at deterring. So some of the offenders that we interviewed, they were what I would call simple concealers. In other words, they're folks that would just take the item and conceal it in their pocket. Maybe they're stealing it for personal use. Maybe they're only taking one or two items. In that case, they're not necessarily going to be deterred by a pecker. solution because they don't do shelf sweeps that's not part of their MO.

They're not trying to get a lot of products just maybe one or two or something. Correct. So what that means from a policy implication standpoint is that retailers should think about before they deploy peg hooks, what kinds of problems are they having? If they are having problems with shelf sweep, peg hooks may be a good consideration, right? But with concealment, probably not so much. Right. Right.

So again, always focus on what your problem is and trying to marry a problem to a solution that makes sense. So I would say that's one major takeaway. Okay. Yeah, and go ahead. I feel like you were talking about more. Yes, there's more. Wait, there's more. Wait, there's more, yes.

Oh, there's a lot more. So I think the second major takeaway is that the store associate piece. So interestingly, the locked peg hook scored the highest. And again, we can speculate on the reasons why. But one thing that we've seen in a lot of these offender interviews is that there are some offenders that just fear that interaction with the store associate. They don't want to talk to the store associate. have them see their face, have them know that they inquired about an item or that they took an item. Right.

So there are some offenders that will be completely deterred by just the locked peg hook solution alone because they don't want to interact with and deal with the store associate. Right. But there's a second group of offenders that don't care about the interaction, but what they tell us is it matters what the store associate does. If the store associate takes the item and then walks the offender to the cash register to pay for it, they're deterred because they don't want to pay for the item. Right. Right.

And then a lot of times they come up with an excuse of, oh, you know what? I forgot my wallet. Right. Yeah. But if the sales associate gives them the item and just leaves them with it, they may go the next aisle over and conceal. So that can erode the deterrence value. Okay. So I think a key takeaway here is that if you are going to utilize these locked pickhooks,

what you have your associates do really matters here, right? You're going to deter a lot of people on the offender side that fear that interaction. But the associates' actions become very important then. Are they walking them to the register with it, achieving deterrence that way, or are they leaving them with the item, which may erode deterrence? Right. So that's the second point. And then I think the third point, major takeaway from this, is store layout matters.

So some of the feedback that we got from the offenders about the spiral crank peckook was that if it was deployed in a location where the store is very large, maybe that area of the store where the pegook is is not as well trafficked. the sound is not going to travel. So then they're not deterred because no one's going to hear the ratcheting sound and the beeping as they take items off. Yeah. Right. Or a noisy store or something like that. Exactly.

Exactly. So vocation matters. Okay. Very good. And we're just about at time here. But I do want to touch on a couple other things before we go. I do want to just let everyone know. So if anyone was interested in maybe some more findings or details about this study or the offender interview program like at large,

or the possibility that someone, one of our members, is looking to ask offenders a question or something like that. Is there something that they could do to either see those details or potentially get a question? into the program? Yeah, absolutely. So, key resource for our members is the Knowledge Center. So best option there is just to go to the Knowledge Center and you can look at other R2Ps that we've written based on the findings of the Offender program and various facets of it.

The other way, if you just want to talk to me directly or if you have ideas for questions that you want to ask offenders, just reach out to me. My email, it's pretty simple. It's justin.s at LPRC.org. So just shoot me an email. I love talking to offenders, love asking a question. So anything that you may want to know or want us to ask, definitely I'd be open to it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Justin, for this time today. Thank you to all of our listeners. Justin said, you can find this report and many others on our knowledge center. And if you don't have access or you're having trouble with that, please reach out to us because we want you guys to have access to all of our reports. But with that, I say thank you to all of our listeners again.

Thank you to Justin. And we will see you guys next time. 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.