LPRC - Episode 7 – Offender Interviews

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

The post Episode 7 – Offender Interviews appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Crime Science, the podcast made possible by the Loss Prevention Research Council. In this podcast, we explore helpful topics about preventing crime and loss, the science behind these efforts, and we'll hear real-world examples from loss prevention and asset protection practitioners and other industry professionals as well. Today we have Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and co-host Tom Meehan of Control Tech, as well as Dr. Maisha Katano of the University of Florida as they discuss offender interviews, including techniques, preparation, and even some horror stories. All right, welcome back everybody to the latest edition of the Crime Science Podcast from the LPRC from Gainesville, Florida. Today, what we're going to do is focus a little bit on research. And what we're going to do is talk about how we collect data, information, how we make sense of that, because we're trying

to always, always understand two things. One, what is causing the problem? What are these causal mechanisms? How does a problem come together, whether it's armed robbery or burglary attempts or theft, fraud, and so on. These are important for us to know how these events come together, how an individual offender ideates something and thinks about it, how and where and when and why, and then why and how they decide to initiate that attempt. Most people that ideate probably don't even come close to actually doing it. And then if they do initiate and start their attempt, their crime attempt, regardless of what it is, they've got to progress through that attempt. But going back as they ideate, where am I going to hit? What type of retailer? What brand of retailer? What location within that brand? And when and what am I after? and these things are going to go through their

mind, maybe not methodically and probably not normally in a logical way, but they have to happen. Again, whether it's an instantaneous ideation or it's something that happens over time. And then the same thing with the initiation. They may well have thought about something, wanted to do it, they're motivated to do it, but they don't do it unless and until an opportunity all of a sudden just presents itself and so forth. So what we do to understand this is we use what's called multi-method research. We're going to look at broad data, we're going to read the literature out there, what have other researchers found, what do they think, what's missing, and how do we build on what others have done in the literature.

And so we're going to look at data modeling. We're going to get data on all types of crime events from the retailer victims, the corporations, and understand what's happening from that high-level view. But now what we've got to do is get down to the ground level. We want to talk to those characters, the individuals, the offenders, the victimizers that are attacking, creating violence, that are stealing, that are generating the fraud attempts that we're all seeing online and in the store. And so we call that offender interviewing. And LPRC, as many of you know, we've been conducting these offender interviews for, you know, 15, 20 years now. One of the few research teams really in the world that conduct active, ongoing offender interviews with theft, fraud, or violence offenders, both in a controlled setting like a hotel meeting room, our lab here

by the University of Florida, but also even more meaningfully sometimes in that environment, in situ, as you say, you know, at that approach point as we walk through parking lots and stores of different types, expose them to treatments we're working on, and so on. So a longtime researcher here, and who I report to at the University of Florida, Dr. Mike Shikotano is with us today on crime science. Mike and I go way back working on this problem for about 18 years now called crime and loss. And he looks younger all the time. He's trying to keep up with Mr. Meehan.

So what we thought we'd do, Tom and I, is spend some quality time with Dr. Shigetano, Dr. Mike as we call him, or Dr. S, and get an idea of what he's been through, what he's experienced, how he's done, prepares for interviews, and conducts them in some things he's learned, and even some humorous and even scary things that he's been exposed to. So with no further ado, I'd like to welcome you, Dr. Mike, here to Crime Science and turn it over to my colleague, Tom Meehan from Control Tech. Tom? Thank you for joining, Dr. Mike. I think this is a topic that our listeners really enjoy,

and I can tell you that probably the thing at the LPRC that I hear the most about is the offender interviews. the thing at the LPRC that I hear the most about is the offender interviews so whether it be through the impact conference and they see people up on the stage or read a study or just through word of mouth talk about offender interviews I can remember when I first started getting into the LPRC about 10 years ago that that was my team's first thing. Can we watch these videos of offenders being interviewed? So this is a great topic for us. And I really am excited to spend a little bit of time going through there. Could you just give the listeners a brief background of how this all started at the University of Florida, how it really started out from how the offenders came

into it and really what the thought process behind it was. Well, we run a research center and we do a variety of different kinds of data collection, surveys, phone, mail, all different kinds of things like that. And we got involved with Reed and provided over the years, we've interfaced and done a lot of different kinds of research. I mean, surveys of retailers. But one of the research ideas, and because of the value to the members, the LPRC members, again, was these interviews of shoplifters. And so Reed asked if we would kind of take that on. And I said, yeah, sure.

I thought it'd be interesting. And so that's basically how we got started. I think there are various retailers. Again, this has been any number of years ago that had an interest in particular products or devices that they had and wanted to get the feedback from the retailer. So that's just how we got started. You want to do it? I said, sure.

It sounds interesting to me. And it's always nice to get off campus. You know, part of the reason why I do have a research center is I just don't want to sit in my campus office all the time. So this was a little bit different, obviously, than some of the things we do. But we took it on. And actually, as I'll talk a little bit later it's something i found very interesting and actually i i enjoyed talking to these folks as uh the shoplifters as odd as it may seem to you uh i found this to be pretty interesting interesting folks so when you're when you're selecting i'm going to probably have a lot of questions about the topic of how you get people to come to you but my my first you first question is, and Reid and I actually worked on a couple of studies where we asked, you know, surveyed information is

how do you get past the self-selection bias? How do you get past the point of the offender actually wants to talk to you about it? So how do you get past the self-selection and make sure that they're truthful and you're actually getting information from them that's accurate and they're opening up to you? Well, generally the process starts with a list of names of shoplifters provided by retailers, various retailers who wanted to participate in the project. And so they would apprehend shoplifters and ask if they wanted to participate in some research. And if they did, then they would collect some contact information, name, and typically the phone number, which is the most important. And we would have sheets of paper of these individuals. Now, you just have to start

calling and trying to get an individual who would be interested in helping with you. And as you may not be surprised, some of the numbers were wrong numbers or probably had gone out of service since the time that they provided that information. So it's a bit of a process of calling and trying to identify people who want to help you and work with you. And so generally when you do that, and then I try to find ones that I think are kind of thoughtful and want to be the most helpful. But at some point we identify an individual who wants to help. And basically I explain what we're doing, the purpose of the research, that it's anonymous. And I think what helps a lot is that we're university-based. And so I tell them we're part of the university and we have to promise confidentiality. And that usually helps.

So you have to kind of talk. And it may take one or sometimes multiple calls to get the individual willing to participate. And you have to kind of build that trust over the phone. And then you have to go and meet these individuals, and that's always interesting because we've done them around. I recall doing them in Chicago, and so you fly out, and are they going to show up at this place at this time? You never know. But hopefully through the phone conversations, you've kind of developed at least an initial relationship.

And normally what we do is we will provide a stipend for these individuals. I think at that time we were given $50 cash. So that obviously piqued their interest. And so then you meet with them. And normally what I would do is I would show them my identification, a driver's license and my identification to indicate that I really was legitimately a researcher and then kind of explain the purposes of the research and, again, promise confidentiality. And I think really you had kind of two questions. One is how do we gain their confidence so that the information they provide is legitimate? The other is, I think you suggested more representative, how do we get individuals who have different skills, different approaches, different issues about why they skill

the steel, those kinds of things. And I think that really is in just getting the number of people so that we get some diversity. But let me talk about the first. And if you want to jump in at any time, go ahead and do that. You know, as academics, we can kind of chat on and on. You need to give me a time limit. But I think you really have to kind of talk to these people and show that you're interested in what they have to say, not talk down to them or think they're any less because they're stealing and typically doing something that violates the law. And I think that's an important part of that relationship. And so normally when I come out, and it may take multiple trips. The first trip may just be with the individual that you connect with.

And then you build that trust. So I give them the money and, you know, we go through the protocol. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And they may bring one or two close friends. But then typically I would call them back, you know, maybe multiple times and say, we want to do more. Can you get us some younger, older? And that's where you get at the representative kind of thing. But at that time, we've developed a relationship and trust with these individuals and they know that we're going to be there. We're

not going to turn them in. We legitimately give them the cash. And the other incentive to them is if the individual that I connected with, that I interviewed, I gave him $50 for the interview, The individual that I connected with that I interviewed, I gave him $50 for the interview. I will give him $50 for each person that he or she refers to us. So it's what we would call a snowball sample. And so I think that's – so it's basically the approach, the interaction, that they develop some confidence with you. They feel comfortable with you. And I guess, you know, hopefully I think that's something just interacting with students, maybe from talking to students, that's kind of a skill, hopefully, that I develop. But it seems like it works out pretty well. And then the second part

is kind of this snowball sample. And we say, look, we'll give you some money. You know, if you bring five people, I'll give you a $5.50s and we'll pay them $5.50s as well, cash money. And, you know, cash money is a big incentive to them. It's not a check or something like that. It's money they can take out and spend at any time. And so I'd say, look, we want, you know, some differences by age, gender, different products they steal. So that's the way we try to get some diversity in the people that we talk to. And hopefully the initial person then, you know, tells the people that he or she brings in that, hey, this is an okay guy. It's a legitimate thing. We just want to talk to you for whatever it is, a half hour, 45 minutes. And so that's basically

the process that we go through to kind of, you know, really pull some useful information from these people. And the other thing, and I want to talk a little bit more about it a little bit later, that there is a culture that these people interact with other shoplifters. And it's almost an alternate universe. I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand that, you know, you get up and you go to your store or I go to campus, these people go to stores to steal. That's their perceived line of work. And they tend to know other people that do that. And that always kind of amazed me. And so, again, if it's a snowball sample,

they talk to their friends and their friends may know of other people, and that's kind of how we do it. So, you know, building upon that initial trust, and then it's kind of iterative if that individual can tell these other folks that, hey, he's an okay guy. We're not going to do anything to you. And that's kind of the way it goes to develop that relationship. If I could, I was going to real quickly jump in, and two things. One, a little quick history on the Lost Fiction Research Council. What happened was, in 1998-99 time frame, King Rogers had come up to me at a RILA conference, AP conference, or MRI, I believe it was called maybe back then, and said, look, what are you working on? So I kind of drew a sketch of the five zones of influence. And this was in that 98 timeframe. He said, wow, this looks like something we could

use. You know, you know what, I want you to think about what would be one compelling research project you could do for Target that would help us get a lot better at what we do. He says, you know, I know a lot of people are benchmarking against us, and I believe they should have been and still should be today, but there's still a lot to learn. And King has always been that, like most real leaders in asset protection and loss prevention, very open-minded and very humble about things. So he said, what can we do?

And I said, you know what, why don't we, and no pun intended, talk to the Target audience? And so let me work on a protocol here to expand a little bit about what we're doing, but do it in a very concentrated way for Target. And I think this just feeds into what Dr. Mike was talking about. And so I gave a proposal back, sent it up to King. He said, you know what, let's go. Where's your next steps? I said, well, I need to meet with your AP person in the Florida area. He said, you know, I'm going to have you meet up with a young man on my team. He's out of Orlando. His name's Marvin Ellison. He goes, I'm going to have you guys meet up. And so we did. We met at Applebee's there, one of these Applebee's in Seminole County, Florida, multiple times to plot and scheme this offender interview program. I ended up interviewing,

I think it was roughly 105 offenders using the protocol that Dr. Mike just said. He talked about snowball sampling. And that project we presented at an NRF general session, their LP conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2000. And that session, that presentation, led to King inviting the industry to join up. Let's establish a science-based organization and entity. We don't have that. Everybody else, dairy farmers, everybody's got this. But amazingly, we don't. We're losing billions of people who are being injured and killed. So that's the genesis of the LPRC. 10 chains form the organization. Here we are today with 53 retail chains and growing rapidly. But the point of that is looking at the sampling that Dr. Mike's talking about, because again, in all research, we look at sampling, we look at measurement, we look at

analysis. You know, who are we trying to talk to here? So you've got to do your homework, and that's what Dr. Mike and us do. You know what, we've got a self-checkout problem, we've got a theft of this type of item or from this type of brand or store. Who should we talk to? You know, looking at video of the incidents, looking at the case reports, getting an idea of who the offenders are, what they look like and are doing, you know, are these young people, older people, one-off people, are they in groups and so on. That's who our target audience, that's who we want to sample from. The samples should be representative. We unfortunately can't use probability sampling, you know, where it's probabilistic like we'd like to. So we use

purposeful and convenient sampling protocols, not as strong of a design, but it's probabilistic, like we'd like to. So we use purposeful and convenient sampling protocols, not as strong of a design, but it's what we got. And Mike and others are masters at snowball sampling to get there. So Tom, I'll go back to you, but I think, I just thought I'd jump in and give everybody an idea with the sampling. You asked a very, very critical question. You don't want to just talk to everybody. You want to talk to the right people, and then you want to ask them the right things the right way, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. So, Dr. Mike, because our audience is so broad and it involves law enforcement, retailers, and then folks from the scientific community, I just, I think your answer was, you know, very good. And I know I

lumped some questions, so I'll try to ask one at a time. But in that, you know, you mentioned this $50 that you pay people, you know, when you're talking about a scientific study and people are volunteering information, how do you weed out the fakes or the posers or the folks that really say, I can get $50. So, you know, I'm a shoplifter. I can get everyone in my family or friends to get in. What's a method you use to weed out to make sure that you're actually talking to an offender? I mean, that's always a challenge. You know, and again, you got to rely upon your original contact to find these people. But we tell them, say, look, we need people that just don't shoplift once or twice that

really aren't going to provide very much information. We need people that, you know, have some skills, have some background. So we try to lay out the criteria of what we're looking for before, you know, we arrive. Because once you get there, like I said, you may be going, like I said, I went to Chicago, we're going to Miami. You know, there may be some distance where you travel. And so hopefully you do that. But the other thing is that I'm giving that individual $50 for a referral. And basically I say, look, if this person that you're getting is not going to be very useful, you ain't getting that $50. You know, this is $50,

not for just dragging somebody in here, but getting somebody that's going to provide some useful information. And of course, even people that are experienced have, and I'll talk about that in a little bit, have variations on how experienced they are, how good they are, which is useful because you want to get a range of people. But generally, I think that $50 incentive and say, look, I'll give that to you after I talk to this person, usually help make sure that we get, I think, credible folks to interview for the shoplifter interviews. No free lunch. So we do the best we can to vet, Tom.

I mean, I've seen some of the interviews, and I can tell you that both the in-person and the videos that I've seen, at least from my gut, that it would be hard for them not to be telling the truth based on some information they're sharing. And, you know, so it's always intriguing to me. think the majority of the population that will, of our listeners, have some level of interview and interrogation experience or training. Some of them might actually, that might be the primary function of their job both in law enforcement and retail asset protection. So I, you know, I'd be really curious so what's the interview method? Is this a method that you came up with or are you using, you know, a method of a cognitive interview or a participatory interview or any of the, is this really a research interview that's different? I know that I've interviewed probably,

you know, hundreds and hundreds of ORC suspects, but they're caught. So it's a much different interview. Their emotions are different and, you know, they're going to give me different information based on the environment. So I'm very curious and I'm sure our listeners are as well to what is the actual interview method that you use? And the retailer that kind of wants the information, what do you want to know? And so typically we do a lot of qualitative research as part of our work at our research center. And we'll write out a protocol. And this is more of a discussion. How did you steal the, you know, different kinds of things. How did you approach so that you get, you know, whatever it is we want information. So I just don't go in and start chatting.

We kind of have a defined protocol that we go down with prompts, you know, for examples, different kinds of things. So that's kind of just the basic qualitative approach that we have. We just, you know, we're pretty thoughtful before we go in of what information we want to get and how we want to get it. And there's actually a written document that I take and put in front and I'll show them. I'll say, look, here are the things. This is just a guide. These are the things we want to talk with. And of course, you know, they may stray off or you may have other things that go in. You have to be a little bit flexible. But we do a lot of prep before we go in of what information we want to obtain. And some people are better than others and other people have insight. So I think that's

the main thing. And we've, you know, have a lot of experience as part of our research. Our research director is a sociologist. She's very good at qualitative research and kind of setting up these questions, how you transition from one to the other. And so generally, at the beginning, you want to give people what we call some soft tosses, some what do you do, where you're from, get them engaged, and hopefully they feel comfortable with you. And then you go through the questions in kind of an order, there's some good transition. And as you get to the more difficult questions about what they steal, what they do with, why they, you know, those are back and hopefully the people feel a little bit more comfortable. So it's kind of a basic qualitative interviewing technique that we do

is not just with shoplifters, but as part of our regular research, whether it's just interviewing or we do a lot of focus groups for various clients that need that. So it's kind of a basic qualitative research approach that we use that I think works pretty effectively. We've really gotten a lot of valuable information out of the interviews. What are some of the things they should look out for? Mistakes that you have made or seen people made that you could help others not? And how do you handle your own biases when you're doing an interview? Well, the first thing is be nice to people that come to interviews with guns.

And that happens. And you're sitting in a room by yourself and you got, I don't know, we got $1,000 or $1,500 in 50s and you got a guy with a gun. So be very nice to them. You know, you have to be sensitive to, you know, and it is funny. My wife keeps saying, take out more insurance, take out more insurance way before you go. So Reed has to buy us insurance before we go. I just try to be open to the folks. And hopefully, like I said, I think it's all in the preparation. If you have the questions that you want to do and the prompts, I think that's what's

important. And hopefully we look at those before we go. And we're sharing those and to try and make sure that we're not buying. So we don't say, you do shoplift because you have some drug dependence. You try not to do any prompts to lead people or anything like that. We try to be as neutral as we can with the question. And then as we ask a general question, give them some specific prompts so that we can pull out more detailed information.

And I think it's all, at least in our approach, it's all in setting up this initial protocol. And again, we all look at it. And of course, Reid has a lot of experience. So he's looking at it from kind of an LP perspective. Our research director, again, does a lot of qualitative. She's looking at it from appropriate question wording. So we don't have wording questions, problems, or use terms that people may not understand. We try to use common terms. We worry about transitions from one topic to the other so that they aren't too abrupt. And again, we start out with soft tosses and kind of gradually draw people in. And by the time you get through a couple of questions,

and hopefully, you know, again, I'm trying to do this in a non-confrontational way. People feel very comfortable. I'm always amazed at how much people will share, you know, about the things that they do and what they steal and why they do it and what their personal life drives them, which we'll talk a little bit more about. So I think it's all in kind of setting up. It's basically qualitative research. It's stuff that we do. It's just on a topic with people that's obviously a little bit more sensitive, but we just draw from a lot of the literature on how to conduct qualitative research. So Dr. Mike, as you're answering all these questions, I find myself taking notes here to

come up with tons of follow-ups. Certainly later on, I want to talk about the gun and some of the horror stories or difficult things that occurred in the interview. I think our audience and myself included is always interested in how we deal with those situations because I think we all have those type of war stories. But when you mentioned the culture of shoplifting, I think that's something that I'm really interested in. But before we get into that, as you're doing these offender interviews, are there different types of offenders that you're starting to identify? Is there a way that you come up with offenders that are dependent on drugs, offenders that are ORC-related where they're really interested in money? How does that work from a research standpoint for you?

Yeah, I really haven't done ORC. I think that's a tougher road to hoe, as we say in Pennsylvania. But in general, I've kind of identified in my mind, I don't know what the literature is. Reid can talk more about that, of two basic categories. And then I have some subcategories under that. The one that you mentioned are people that have some sort of dependency. And that may be alcohol or drug or just maybe some life situations. I interviewed one woman that had severe dyslexia. She said, I can't hold a job. And so she had a

child. She had to steal. She stole formula and other products, obviously, that she could sell. And so they have some sort of dependency that makes them unable to function as you would think of most of us in the normal world, or at least they believe that. And they're always interesting because depending upon the dependency, particularly drug, that's the first thing they have to do in the morning. They go out and steal. And then they go buy a six-pack or they see the folks that have whatever kind of medication

or drugs that they need. the folks that have whatever kind of medication or drugs that they need. And alcohol sometimes can be a cough medicine or a mouthwash they'll do, but they need something, and then they'll go on from there. But that's the first thing they have to do in the morning. Then the others I call, it's just my own term, buccaneers. And these are basically younger kids, I think, who don't like to work, as maybe most young kids want to do. So they kind of party all night, sleep, and then go out and steal. So it's an easy, in their perception, it's an easy kind of lifestyle, or it's an engaging

type of lifestyle. So I generally see those kind of people. And within that, you know, I thought a lot about this. And I think there's a distribution. I generally think the buccaneers are better at this because the other folks have some sort of, like I said, if you're dependent on drugs or alcohol or, you know, whatever, you have some sort of impairment that makes life difficult for you, that you can't get a job or, you know, can't hold a job. The buccaneers tend to have less of those kinds of things, and they're more like us in the real world. They just like this lifestyle.

They like to party and go to, you know, bands and music all night, sleep and go steal. lifestyle. They like to party and go to, you know, bands and music all night, sleep and go steal. You know, within that then, I thought a lot about that is kind of what makes a good or bad. So a rough category, and I think the general shoplifting literature, and Reed can talk to this, kind of has amateur and professional as kind of basic categories. I tend to, and I see that, you know, some people just do this, other people, this is their life's work, or at least for a while. I tend to think of kind of four types of characteristics that the better ones are good at and the ones that aren't. And I, again, I think about this a lot. I don't know why, but I do.

One is kind of awareness. And it's always fascinating to talk to these people. They'll come into a store, and I would say they're like aborigines out in the wilderness. They can look at the way the grass is bent, that there's been an antelope go by or something like that. They're looking at camera lines. If there are people in the store that are kind of undercover, they have this great awareness to go into the store. And I just see them looking around. It's just fascinating. I didn't see that.

I'm looking around. I go, no, no, look here. There's a camera here. But if I'm here, they can't see me. And it just fascinates me how aware some of these people are. And these are the ones that tend not to get arrested very much because they're much more aware. Another characteristic are techniques that they use for shop theft. And sometimes I'm interviewing these people and I'm supposed to be taking notes and my mouth is just, how did you think of that?

It just amazes me. But the one story that I remember is a guy says, well, they go into a store, three guys. They go in separately. There's a fourth guy that's going to be out in the lot waiting for them. So it's a team of four. But they go into a store separately. Two guys are dressed respectably, and there's some grungy guy. And the grungy guy is rummaging around doing all this stuff. He doesn't steal a thing. The two nicely dressed guys are stealing him blind. And then when they leave, so they got their guy out in the parking lot with a car just outside the door. They pull up.

The two nice dressed guys, so they come in separately, but they go out together. Two nice dressed guys go out they come in separately but they go out together two nice dressed guys go out and the grungy guy and they go to the pedestal and you know pedestals don't always work but if it sets the pedestal off who's ever there they'll grab the grungy guy and got nothing on him and the two nicely dressed guys are out the door in the car in a way and so it always a fast you know fascinates me just how these people are very creative. I mean, they put their life's energy and their intellectual energy into thinking of ways of stealing, just like you think of ways of selling more or whatever we do or how to teach different things. They put a

lot of energy into it. And so sometimes I'm just really fascinated by how creative these people are. A fourth kind of characteristic I think are skills that people have, kind of hand-eye coordination. One story I have is that there was this product. Of course, there's products listed on a peg, and one of the things we want to do is keep them from kind of pulling everything off the peg at one time. And so there's kind of a peg with items and a little flap you had to pick up to pull an item off. So you couldn't use two hands. One hand had to pick the flap off and the other hand had to pull the product off.

And if you held the flap up too long, like you were stealing, there would be a buzzer go off. So this guy looked at it and did it once and figured out how long it took for the buzzer to go off. And then like within five seconds, he was picking that buzzer off within five seconds he was picking that buzzer off pulling a product picking a buzzer pulling a product off i mean picking the flap up pulling a product off and the buzzer never went off and he was cleaned the place and was out of there just about as fast as if there was no no flap and we're just kind of like standing with our mouths open so it's always amazing the the the technique some of these people i call like magicians with their hands and how they can move them. They're very good. Another example that I have, kind of both a

combination of skills and awareness and a technique, but this fellow was stealing products. It was a little box. And so he would, and he knew who the camera was. And so he would, and he had cargo pants off with the little pockets like in the legs. And so he would and he knew who the camera was and so he would and he had cargo pants off with the little pockets like in the legs and so he would pull off of the shelf four or five of these products and of course looking at them in the camera it was a two-dimensional you couldn't see he had three or four he just knew how to pull them off and then he'd be doing something else with his left hand this looks at his right hand and kind of distracting. In the meantime, he would put, say, three or four of these, have one product left in his pocket, in his cargo pants, out of sight of the camera, and then put one back in. So from the camera's

perspective, the two-dimensional took a product off and put it back in. And again, this is just the skill that this person had as well as the awareness. The other characteristic, I think, is kind of the approach that people have, and this kind of really gets into probably something we should do more of is network analysis, which gets into this culture of knowing people. But they talk to other people, and they say, this is a good store to steal from. There's a lot of, you know, hidden sight lines. from. There's a lot of, you know, hidden sight lines. The clerk is behind a counter and is 75 years old, is not going to bug you. And so they know places that are good to steal. And they get this through their culture. And then they know different stores. So they're not going into the

same store, you know, repeatedly because they're looking for them. So, you know, there are probably other skills. But again, these are some things that I've picked up in interviewing that the good people are really pretty perceptive and pretty aware of. And it just, like I said, it amazes me how willing they are to talk. And I just kind of let them go and give them a few prompts. And you learn really a great deal of information from talking to these people. So, wow. I think it's awesome. You have such a depth of knowledge and as you're talking, I'm, I'm jotting down questions

and you're already answering them. So like talking about the, the one question I had and you kind of alluded to it is the culture of shoplifters. And this was something Reed and I talk about all the time is if the whether it's organized retail time if you want to say a habitual shoplift or or you know an amateur shop with the distance friends that shop with I'm always curious to how involved that culture is do you find that people are teaching people in that community? So if you have, you know, I'll use your types here and I'll say like the Buccaneers, if one of these guys is getting real successful at shoplifting, do you find that the person that is talking to you, they actually discuss

methodology and what stores are easier and almost do what we're doing right now? Yeah. I mean, I don't know that there's a school where they sit down and do it, but they're interacting with these people on the street corner and they're exchanging this information. What products are good to steal? What stores are good to steal? What times are there good? Because we know there's less staffing, you know, those kinds of things. How to get rid of, how to fence the products?

You know, where do you get rid of them? We knew somebody was selling blades and he would go to a bus stop because people are coming out and all these legitimate people buy those blades half price. Sure, I'll do it. So yeah, there's this. And again, this is a kind of a network analysis. It's not my area, but there's people that do this on all kinds of issues. But who interacts with who and how they talk with people? I think that'd be really fascinating research product to get people that do network. And so yes, they do exchange all this information. Again, I don't know that there's a form where they have a website, or they may do that, I don't know. But they interact a good deal, and they share this information. About a year and a half ago, we actually took some offenders on the

road, Mike Giblin, our senior research scientist here on our team, and myself, to work with some retailers. And during that journey, I'll never forget a couple things, but one, we're driving in this rental car through this amazing, beautiful countryside, and it's farms, and it's just picturesque with hay rolls and cattle. And there were these two massive John Deere tractors sitting next to each other. And I kind of remarked to Mike, my colleague, that's just an amazing view. Look at that. In the meantime, I kind of picked up subconsciously the two of the offenders in the back seat. And they're talking and noting the same view we are, but the perspective being so different. They're back there talking about how to steal tractor batteries,

and that some counties now have put limits on how many batteries you can fence per time, and so on. So we're admiring the beauty. They're discussing how to make money off of tractor batteries. I'm fascinated by talking to these people, particularly the bright ones. Like I said, from an academic environment where we're teaching, we do, and it's just a whole different thing. And, and, and, you know, you don't, don't think these people are, they're not, they're very bright people, you know, and so why do they do this? But it's, but it's incredibly interesting work. You know, one thing I was going to ask you about, Mike, as a scientist, a research scientist, as faculty at the University of Florida, primarily, I'm primarily research, a research scientist, as faculty at the University of Florida, I'm primarily

research as a research scientist track. You're obviously tenure track, and as associate professor, you research and teach. But one thing that we know about, and I thought I'd just bring it up, Tom, and to our listeners about, when you're working with human subjects in research, human participants, we, of course, have to have all our research reviewed by the Institutional Review Board, IRB. And UF's so massive. I mean, we're closing in on $900 million annually in sponsored research. But all human subject research has to go through the IRB.

And we have four IRBs here. And we work with IRB2, social and behavioral science. It's not medical or other types that we're in primarily. So, Mike, I thought maybe if you wanted to illuminate a little bit about IRB or, you know, we have to be cognizant that our research does no harm. Yeah, and I think that's an important part of what we always do is protect the rights of the participants. And so, you know, there's an informed consent. So we just don't go in and, you know, force them to do this. It's all voluntary.

They can get out of it at any time. We promise that they're going to be confidential. If we record it, typically they make us destroy the recordings after we pull the information. So we're always caught, even though these people are shoplifters, they're people. And we don't want to interview typically underage people. So there's a whole variety of protocols that we go through that makes it more difficult. But I think it's always important. It's for any research that we do.

And again, we want to remember that these are people. And we're not in any way coercing them or forcing them to do it. So that's an important part. We always make sure that they're aware of their rights as research participants. I think that's one of the things when I was referring to you before is that kind of wraps up the self-selection and how do you weed through and it's kind of a double-edged sword. You make sure you're treating them fairly from my experience interviewing or see folks live um in a live environment i've actually gathered that there is at least on the orc side a fairly wide community and there

are forums and there is really in-depth conversation and i kind of laugh there's probably an underground group just like the lprC for the bad guys, because I've actually, in some data research in my previous role, came up with very in-depth, go here, this is the time to go, this is the method to steal, this is where you go. almost through recruitment. So I'm always interested in the culture of shoplifting piece because as a retailer, when I, you know, I spent 20 years in retail before switching sides, most of the shoplifting where we really were digging in was in that ORC, that larger case or that habitual side. And the culture was very different. And, you know, just, I spoke about a culture thing where what I saw

with ORC specifically is the progression or the evolution of the offender. So they started out shoplifting, then they went to ORC, then they went to credit card fraud. And then at this point, are bridging, almost bridging to a cyber or computer crime because they could need to feel that and what I was surprised with in my own research and the reason I did something a couple years ago kind of that we never published all the information on but we published some of was that a lot of these folks got into the cycle of the system or crime and couldn't get out but needed to grow up in it

and we saw that but that was really related to ORC where the method always was at the end of the day I need to get rid of goods regardless of whether it started with a dependency or what so the cultural piece is always very very interesting to me so my question on that piece is when you're interviewing offenders, do you see that it starts off small often and then goes into something else? Or is it really dependent on the offender itself? I think there's always some of that, you know, some of the kids, they would start off with gum or whatever as they were kids and then find out that there were kind of more lucrative kinds of things that they could do and kind of progressed up to that.

And I think at some point there's a termination. So I do see that, where they're stealing more higher-value items. But I think there's also a termination and that eventually some of these people get caught. And so there's almost a life cycle. It's probably a research topic that we should do more of the life cycle of a shoplifter. And it may vary. That's kind of the buccaneer approach. But even some of the good people I find, I've gone and gone back and I say, where's this person? Well, they're in jail. So eventually they get caught. The pattern for an

ORC versus a kind of a regular person may be different. What's interesting from the dependency folks too, because I spoke with my doctor about this, is you look at some of these people. There's probably a health life cycle. There's people that you think are 75 or 45. And so these people are living a very hard life. They're street people. They're not getting good nutrition. And so to some extent, their life cycle may be a real life cycle in that which we don't think of. So some may be because they're apprehended.

Others because they become physically not capable of doing this. So, yeah, it's really a rich area for research that we typically don't think of and, you know, links to some other kinds of things that we do kind of non-offender research on. I thought I'd share real quickly part of, so Mike talked a lot about, you know, we're going to prepare, we're going to think this through before we start in our research before, you know, who do we sample, how do we get a hold of them and vet them to make sure they are who they say they are and so on? But the measurement error is a big thing. And Mike alluded to that saying, you know, I'm not here to prompt you or put words in your mouth.

I'm here to, like a thermometer, in an unhindered way, collect data. And so I'm going to allow you the opportunity to share with us what we're trying to find out here, but not influence what you say, or in any way, shape, or form, or at least minimize. So we're always trying to get the sampling right, so it's representative of who we talk to, the measurement accurate, that we're asking the right things, the right way, we're consistent. You don't want to have, we're trying to measure what we're learning from the offender, what they're telling us, not how well a researcher asks a question.

And so there's always that variation between them. And we have statistical techniques to look at inter-rater reliability and some of these, there are coefficients that we can use to look at that. So I thought I'd bring that part up. I'd bring that part up. But at the end of the day, what Mike and Stephanie and the other Mike and myself and Stuart and so on on our teams, Tracy, we're trying to help the retailer, the executive, the law enforcement officer get better at preventing crime by deterring people, by disrupting their activities again before or after they initiate something. And so what is that, you know, what do we look at? How are they targeting? Why are they going to places? Why are they targeting certain assets? Why are they using certain methods? What might deter, disrupt them,

or has in the past? And a quick concept to think about, we're trying to measure in the moment as much as possible, not they're remembering. Our memories are very, very, very faulty, and anybody that's interviewed like yourself and many and many of our listeners know, we want to learn the truth, not what we want to hear. And so that's just some of the basic concepts to understand why or why not. Why would this thing affect you that we put out this deterrent measure, this countermeasure? Why would it not? Where have you seen this? But when we bring them to the field, we're putting them more in experiencing me than just relying on remembering me. So we just want to add that, you know, while we're interviewing shoplifters, the techniques that we use, kind of qualitative

social science techniques, are the same ones we use for any kind of research, not just shoplifting, just that the topic that we have are shoplifters. And they may be more sensitive, but even when you do a focus group with other individuals, we've done some on political attitudes. You know, you have to make those people feel comfortable. So we do some of those same kinds of things. Obviously, this is a bit more challenging because of the focus and that they do things that are not, you know, that are not legal. But still, the tools that we use

to do this are just kind of basic qualitative social science skills that we use for all kinds of populations. Yeah, I think the audience, you know, who does interview and interrogation always struggles with unconscious bias. So when you're interviewing a subject, especially an offender that you haven't caught or that you're gathering information, whether you realize it or not, you're generally trying to justify what you wanted them to say. So if you're a retailer that's big, that has an ORC department, you want them to tell you things that help fuel your ORC department. And I's, you know, I think it's unconscious bias. So that's why I asked that question. From sitting in my seat, you know, I can remember vividly owning all of technology,

all of investigations. And we started doing phone interviews when offenders were caught. And my team subconsciously is leading, you know, it's not on purpose, it's definitely unconscious, but leading them to the answer they want to hear. And so that was why I asked that interview method question. And I know Reid and I talk all of the time about self-selection bias, unconscious biases, and, you know, that's why I think the LPRC is such a great organization for folks to join because it helps remind us all of that. I know for me personally, I've always said the truth is what's important. It's not always going to be what we want to hear. And when I interviewed, I did my very best to be objective. But even so, you know, there is that

self-service or that self-serving prophecy of I need to get this person to admit to theft. I need this person to reinforce my belief. So that's why I ask that. And that's why I think the scientific methodology and being an outside entity really helps loss prevention departments and law enforcement to make good decisions on how to prevent. And switching sides and being responsible for product development, today in a solution provider, I get a different, you know, a whole different perception because I got to sit on both sides. So I think it's, it's intriguing for everybody. So now, I mean, I have questions that are more of the war stories and the fun stuff is you talk to all these people. Are there any horror stories or anything that's just crazy? I think our listeners would love to hear some of those. I have lots, but I think there's one that I like to tell.

So I'd been at a distance interviewing, and I had gone through the whole process, made a contact, and went down initially. Then I called this fellow up and said, I want to come back down again. Can you get us some good folks? We'll give you the $50. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all set up, so I'm going to come down at this certain date. And I got $50, you know, this WADA 50. I got recording devices. We're showing some various products and things like that50 and you know this wad of 50 I got recording devices I got this we're showing some various products and things like that can't find this guy I mean he was a dependent guy

and God knows where he's on drugs who knows and ditch or something but the previous time I've been down one of the the the first time one of the fellows that his name was Philip I still remember his name and he's and he was kind of like hey if you want me to do something because he wants to get the 50 buck referral fee he says call me so I had his name so And he was kind of like, hey, if you want me to do something, because he wants to get the 50-buck referral fee, he says, call me. So I had his name. So I call him. I says, Philip, I'm down here. I got this other guy. He says, I'll get you some folks. I'll get you some folks. And so he says, come pick me up. So I don't know where he was. He didn't have a car. So I pick him up. And this was in South Florida. We were actually in North Florida, outside of Miami. He says, go here. He's telling me where to go.

We went downtown, downtown Miami. It's dark. It's raining. He says, pull around the corner and stop. I'm sitting there in this car by myself. It's dark in these streets. I'm looking for whatever, getting my prayer book out. He brings up five guys. He says, I got these guys.

I was staying at a hotel. I'll take them back to the hotel and interview them where I had the products and the cash. So they're getting in a car. So it was a smaller car. This is me and Phillip and these five guys. And they're like, we'll ride in the trunk. We're used to that. I'm like, no, no, just get in the back seat. And the guy's like, oh, man, it's tight. My gun's getting in my ribs and stuff like that. And I'm like, good Lord, help us all. And so we take him back to the hotel and I parked the car kind of in a little quieter, darker space. And I give one of the guys 50. There was a little, I says, go over the convenience store, get you guys some cigarettes, some beer,

some snacks, stay here. I'll come down and get you one by one. So I take the guys up in the room and I'm interviewing them and they got, they got they got the little, what do you call them, little 22s, you know? And so I take them down and I look out and nobody in the parking lot. Where are all these guys? So I go look in the lobby and they're all sitting around. There's crushed beer cans and smoke and cigarette butts. And this is a place where the police, I guess it was one of their places where they kind of stayed.

So they're outside. I'm looking out the window and I I thought, oh, my God. And I says, come on. So I hustle these guys out, you know, and I take them upstairs. But what's worse, I visualize this all the time. And I stay at that hotel a number of times because there's a UF research facility we use, and I go down, and I have this flashback. It's PTSD.

It's like post-traumatic shoplifting disorder. I walk down the stairs of this hotel and I see these guys sitting there, you know. And I thought, my God, whatever it takes. Of course, this is, again, sitting up in a room with a guy with a pistol, you know, with my $50, thousands of dollars in the 50s. So it makes it interesting.

You know, I guess it's a horror story, but there's always some situation. These are just, that's their life that they live. They didn't think there was anything at all unusual about sitting in this lobby. It was a very nice hotel, drinking beer. So that's kind of one story that I tell that kind of haunts me again and again as I see that lobby. So I wanted to just take the time to thank you again for joining us. I hope, I hope because we only have an hour, I hope you can join us again.

I mean, I could probably sit here and talk to you for days, and I know our listeners are going to want more based on the topic and the way you presented it. So hopefully you can join us again. You know, I want to thank you for your time and I'll turn it over to Reed. Wow. And of course I could totally concur, Tom. Thanks Dr. Mike for coming in, sharing, spending time. We've got a really neat set of videotapes or, you know, video footage of some of Dr. Mike's interviews, some, and including a greatest hits. And there's one, of course, it always stands out that we'll talk greatest hits. And there's one, of course, it always stands out that we'll talk about later,

but that's really neat. So, all right. I thank you very much, Dr. Mike. Thank you, Tom. And to all our listeners out there, we appreciate you tuning in. Please send any words of advice to us. How do we make our podcast better,

more informative, more useful, more impactful for you? So from Gainesville, Florida, from Kevin Tran, our producer, so long, everybody.