LPRC - SPECIAL RE-RELEASE: CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 204 Ft. Cory Lowe, PhD

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

LPRC CrimeScience Episode 204 with Guest & LPRC Director of Research Cory Lowe, PhD This week our host discusses the latest in LPRC news, research, visitors, and events! In this episode, our host Read Hayes, PhD and Director of Research Cory Lowe, PhD dive into the LPRC’s strategic focus for 2025, highlighting the CONNECT initiative and how it aims to link people, places, processes, and technology across retail environments. They unpack the “Affect, Detect, Connect” framework, discuss how LPRC’s research team is structured to tackle theft, fraud, and violence, and explore Corey’s personal journey into criminology. They also share insights into current working groups on Violent Crime and Organized Retail Crime (ORC), exciting updates about the IMPACT Conference and its expanded agenda, and an upcoming collaborative summit with CLEAR and FLEPRU. Don’t miss this in-depth look at the science driving crime prevention! Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

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. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science podcast from the LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series. And we're going to talk about all things crime and loss control with a special emphasis on retail environments, but how those environments fit into a neighborhood and a community. and beyond. So joining me today, Diego Rodriguez, our producer, and our special guest is Dr. Corey Lowe, and Corey is our research director at the LPRC, the Laws Prevention Research Council. And Corey heads up a team of 12 dedicated researchers working year-round to reduce deaf, fraud, and violence to make people and places safer.

And welcome, Corey, to Crime Science, the podcast. Thank you for having me. All right, excellent. So we'll launch right into it. And I guess the first thing to do is I think what's a major emphasis of LPRC research right now overall? You know, what's kind of our overarching strategy and focused at this point? Then we'll go in a little deeper in a minute. I think in broad terms, the broadest way to describe it is the Connect initiative.

So what we're trying to do is we're trying to connect people, places, processes, and technology, you know, within store locations, between store locations, and then between organizations. So, for example, we really, every retailer out there can do a better job of taking all these different sensors and people and everything at a store location and bringing all that information together. and then bringing all those things together across multiple stores. And then finally, it doesn't, you know, many cases, retailers can't do much unless they're really connecting with their external partners in the community, whether that's other retailers, law enforcement, or other community partners. So trying to find out, figure out better ways to do that with the partners is another key piece. That's it in a nutshell as far as a major initiative for,

2025. But of course, we're still focused on the key themes of theft, fraud, violence across retail. But I'd say that's the major theme for 2025. All right. Excellent. And that is really a good summary that we really are working very hard to connect the right people in places and technology to the right information and intelligence to go and do a better job. We're trying to connect the technologies we're using to deter people and so forth. Those all need to be integrated together. So we're just trying to tie that together. So I think let's talk just for one minute about the difference between connect, effect, and

detect. If you could lay that out, Corey, in a nutshell as well. Oh, definitely. So there's three key things that we're trying to accomplish at the LPRC. We want to help retailers affect individuals. we want to detect crime and other loss events and, of course, offenders. And then we want to connect everything so we can better affect and detect. To go a little bit deeper into that, by effect, what we mean is we want to influence the intentions and actions of both red and green guests.

And we have to think about how we approach that simultaneously for both those people who are there to shop, vend, manage, you know, work, whatever. and those that are also there to kill, steel, destroy. That's what we refer to as the green guests and the red guests. And we have to think about those parties simultaneously and think about how what we're doing is going to affect those parties. On the D-Tech side, if we are going to be able to better affect behaviors, we have to be able to detect individuals who might be engaged in something nefarious when they're on the premises or when they're about to do something. nefarious. And then connect. Like I said, we have to be able to connect all these technologies and things, as well as people and processes. So it's one thing for me to detect that someone, an offender

has pulled into the parking lot, driving a specific car. It's one thing to know that. It's another thing to act upon it and make sure that people do the right thing in response to that. So the connect is, you know, not only connecting all of these technologies so that you can use the information you have when you need to use it, but making sure that you get to the right people as well, that place manager, as we like to call it. So that's really what we're trying to do with the effect, detect, connect framework. Excellent. So with the research team that we've got, how have you kind of set up the team? Who have you hired? What roles are they in? And what are the executing, I guess again, a summary, to do all the three things, to better affect, detect, and

connect, learn how we do it so that we can then work with the retailers and other practitioners like law enforcement partners to better accomplish all the above for greater safety. So on the effect side, we've brought on, you know, of course, you and I are both criminologists, But we also have Justin Smith and Christina Burton, who are both crime scientists. I mean, their PhDs are both in criminal justice. But they're really focused on how we affect the offender, right? How do we make them to make better decisions about what they're doing with their lives, situationally and environmentally.

So they're really focused on how do I manipulate an environment or a situation so that it enhances the risk, the risk that an offender will experience negative consequences. How do you increase the effort required for an offender to actually commit an offense? And then also how do we reduce the reward so that offenders don't really see the point in offending. There's not a good reason because the reward is diminished. That's on the effect side. On the detect side of things, we have quite a few people who are working with technologies and processes to understand how to detect some of these behaviors. Of course, there's Caleb, Boiur, on our team, who is a computer engineer and working with all these high-tech solutions, whether it's facial recognition, audio detection, things like

that to be able to detect offenders in place. But then we have other members of our team who play a supporting role, people like Jonathan DeWong and Josh Bush, who are really helping to put these technologies in the labs and connect them so they actually work effectively. You know, there's some technologies out there like the FUSIS platform and Command Central Wear that make things possible that I could never even imagine just a few years ago. So that's the detect piece. That's also the connect piece. So we have several scientists on the team who are all focused on connected. The connect, as I mentioned earlier, you have to connect things to better detect and effect. So we all kinds of kind of have our hands in the connect area.

But we do have Sam Young on our team who's working on connecting all the data points along with Jeffrey Sue, who's also working on that. And like I said, we're all kind of working to make sure that these technologies, people, processes, all of that's connected in some way so we can better detect and affect. Excellent. So, I mean, I think to me, it helps us think about what we're trying to do and then now getting the right team in place, the right technologies. And you called out a couple of those like FUSIS and Motorola's Command Central Aware. And we have quite a few others now. We're really excited about that are fusing together information and connecting all the different

data points that might be out there in systems and across a community in addition to individual places and of course enterprises so let's kind of now we're going to take one step back and Corey how did you get into crime prevention into criminology crime science um what's that look like in some that is a that is a long story um i um i um i like to tell people that a lot of people get into criminal justice and criminology because they have law enforcement in their background. I, my, my family was, you know, had a little bit of both, but mostly the law breaking in my background. And I really started out wondering why my family and broader community, why some of the people were engaged in things that they were engaged in. So I actually started as a math major, I dropped out because of some family challenge.

and went back to school later on. I went all the way through and completed my Ph.D. But when I went back to school, I started I was a math major. And when I went back, I really wanted to figure out some of these social issues and why people did the things that they did. And I started out with big, the big issues around society and southern culture and politics and why the South was the way it was, generally speaking. and over time I honed in further and further on, you know, why were individuals making the decisions that they made? And that's what really led me to criminology. I really wanted to understand why people did the things that they do.

So at the same time, if you can understand why people do the things that they do and you know that those things are harming other human beings, you can begin to figure out, okay, what can I do to keep people from harming? other people. And so that's the reason I was really drawn to prevention science. And then, you know, it was as luck or fate would have it, positioned to open up at the LPRC in the last year of my PhD. And so it seemed like a perfect opportunity. I've always been interested in all the different ways that we can prevent crime, including the criminal justice, but criminal justice system, but also going beyond it, You know, how can institutions like churches and businesses and all of those other institutions, how can they contribute to crime prevention?

So the LPRC just seemed like the perfect place for me to explore that. That's a great answer and good insight. So let me ask you about you, you know, working groups has long been the way that LPRC and really the main way that LPRC has tried to translate what we learn and research ourselves, what we learn from reading the literature. In other words, reading about the research and concepts of others that are out there around the U.S. and around the globe. But the working groups are where the rubber meets the road. Can you tell us just a little bit about the working groups? And then what working groups are you currently helping or doing completely facilitating right now?

Yeah. So I actually facilitate the violent crime working group. And I co-facilat the organized Retail Crime Working Group with Christina Burton on the team. The working groups are a fantastic place for us to not only translate what we're doing and to educate retailers about the research that we're doing and what we're finding, but it's just a great place for us to collaborate as a community to build research projects and to work on those projects together. I think one of the best ways I can explain what we do is I always encourage all of our retail members to be to be selfish. So if the retail members are, if they have a problem

that they're facing, they can bring those to the working groups. And one of two things will happen. Either one, somebody already has kind of figured out the solution to a problem or one of many solutions to a problem. Or no one's figured it out. We could work on the problem together. So, for example, recently we had a retailer come to us and say they're updating their behavioral threat assessment and management program and wanted to understand what other retailers are doing in that space. So I said most definitely we can we can bring that to the working group and we can explore what everyone's doing and what ways they're innovating in the BTAM training space. And we learned a lot. A lot of retailers are doing some very innovative things. expanding their programs to include more and more employee groups.

But that's just one example of a project. We're also working on other things like risk assessment considerations and things like that. What are some factors to consider when we're trying to assess the likelihood of risk at a given location? On the ORC side of things, there's been quite a few projects that we're involved in. There's scraping projects that we're working on with team members, trying to understand how we can gather better criminal intelligence about resellers. There's work being done on, you know, what factors are associated with successful e-commerce case outcomes, investigations, things like that.

And then we are also very interested in understanding some transnational ORC groups and the trends there. Before the end of last year, we also worked on gift card, you know, gift card draining schemes and scams really to understand how those are being done and what can be done to address that. So those are just a few examples, of course, for the working groups we have not only just the violent crime and ORC working groups, but we also have retail fraud, data analytics, product protection, supply chain protection. And they're all doing amazing work in all those areas.

So that's about that. All right, excellent. So let's talk a little bit about the Impact Conference. And what are the dates and what's the overall sort of objective of the Impact Conference this year? And what sessions are you involved in, Corey? So this year, Impact is going to be March 24th to the 26th. It was supposed to be back in October, but got out of their plans and we had a hurricane. We had to move things around. And the theme, when we first, you know, set about for the October impact was a little less conversation, a lot more action. So how do we, you know, actually how do we inform what retailers are doing? And that's kind of what we're always doing. But we really wanted to make sure that we had action results. And so at the LPRC Impact Conference, what we try to do is take the research, work with practitioners, and really show what retailers can do to address theft, fraud, violence, and all of that.

We have a ton of great content this year. It's more content than we've ever had. In fact, we had to kind of restructure the way that we do the conference and sessions with lightning sessions, which are like short-form versions of some of the content that we wanted to do. But just to give some examples of some of the stuff that I will be presenting at LPRC impact. We have a recovery playbook session.

So we've worked with a lot of different retailers on understanding, you know, what they are doing and what they are not doing for active estate recovery processes and understanding just the key lessons from that. We, you know, last year at integrate, we had a fantastic session with a bunch of retailers who had managed the recovery process for an active assailant, one or more active assailant incidents. And we came away from that with a lot of the retailers saying, hey, we need, we need something that can help guide the recovery process for the active assailant incidents. And so what we did is we worked with a lot of those retailers who have worked through that process to identify some of the key

elements of that process and what retailers can do to make sure that they were in control of that recovery process. I think one of the most important learnings from that is that if the retail leaders are not in control of the process, someone else will be. And that really ranges from everything from, you know, driving the employee assistance piece. I mean, there's a role for LBBB play in that. But there's also a role for LP and security leaders to play in informing where things like memorials are set up on property, right? If retailers don't take the first step to kind of lead memorializing the victims of something like that, somebody else is going to set that. They're going to put memorials all over the property and do things like that. So I think the key lesson is that if

you're not controlling some of these things, you're going to be living by the MIMS. of others and that won't lead to a orderly recovery. We will also be focusing on, you know, there's another project there. We've been working on without those actually a series of projects. It's focused on closing the loop. One of the things, one of the reasons that we're so focused on that intersection of retail and law enforcement and retail and prosecution is that the criminal justice system ultimately shapes the actual risk of negative consequences. So to give you a little bit more information about that, a little bit more background.

Earlier, I mentioned that we want to enhance the risk of negative consequences to offenders. Well, retailers typically do that by asking or putting in technologies and things like that, that will make offenders believe that there's a greater likelihood that they will see some kind of negative consequences, whether that's probation, fees, fines, you know, jail time or even prison time. Unfortunately, retailers only have so much influence there, right? They don't actually control the prison system. They don't control the courts, but there's things that they can do. to influence those outcomes. So there's this disconnect between what the retailers do and what the criminal justice system does. And if we don't have appropriate follow-up, then there's actually no risk to offenders, right, if the criminal justice system isn't acting.

So that's what we're doing there is really focusing on what can retailers do to ensure that offenders actually experience negative consequences. Those are just two of the many sections that we have. at impact, but I hope that gives a good taste of some of the things we're working on. I think it's a great feel for what we're doing. Let me circle back first. Just a second, you mentioned the Violent Crime Working Group and the ORC Working Group. Well, you're doing something unique and special coming up in 2025, because we've particularly

usually had a violent crime working group summit. The first one in Jacksonville, we had a fantastic one in Baltimore, another one in Houston, and Albuquerque. But what are you doing differently this year, Corey, with that idea of that summit and going beyond that? So this year, in the past, we've had the violent crime summit, typically in April. This year, we're doing something a little bit different because impact was moved to March, which put about three weeks in between impact and the violent crime summer. Another issue that we face in the, in the, at the OPRC and in the industry more generally, is that there's just a lot of events.

And so I've received requests for us to do more content related to the intersection of law enforcement and retail. And so I reached out to our friends over at the collection. of law enforcement and retail and worked with them to partner on a violent crime at ORC summit, which ends up just being a joint event in October this year with Clear and Fleeperoo, which is a Florida law enforcement property recovery unit. But both those organizations are fantastic. So we'll be doing a joint event with them later on in the year. We'll have a lot of very engaging content around both organizers to prime, which has historically been a focus of the clear event, but also violent crime. You know, initially we were thinking, you know, this would be a

violent crime and ORC summit or a serious crime summit. And it just worked out perfectly that we could partner with them on this because there is a, there's a very firm and very strong recognition that the ORC is a problem, but violence is a serious concern as well, probably a greater concern than anything else going on in the industry right now, really. So that's going to be fantastic. I'm really looking forward to that and putting together some sessions for that event later on this year. Yeah, that's excellent. It's exciting to allowing us to expand and extend our research to other venues and formats even more actively than in the past. And, you know, kind of what we're doing is we're in the business of facilitating working groups, research and

labs in the field, and even at the community scale, you know, we're here to solve problems, right? But we know we've got to translate that information into action and support our practitioners, both retailer and law enforcement, combined. But now being able to do that more venues without ourselves putting on more events. Events can be very, very time-consuming, because if we're doing it, we're doing it right at LPRC, but that means a lot of people ours, conceiving, and, and and developing and executing and and cleaning up afterwards and getting ready for the next one so when we can do something like this with you know with fleeproup and clear um two excellent uh story groups it's really exciting you know doing things with the lp foundation at nrf or rila

in fmi and in uh in knacks and beyond uh that's when it's exciting rcc retail council canada and so forth So that's good insight. I appreciate that, Corey. Well, what I'm going to do is say, I want to appreciate you coming on and all that you're doing for LPRC membership and more broadly, all those places and people that are being safeguarded better and better every day and week and month. And what the team's doing, how the team's coming together and becoming more and more productive and innovative at all the times. So I want to thank Diego, our producer, and I want to thank you all the listeners out there. Stay safe and stay in touch. 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.