Are we changing into a country of shoplifters? That is the query Stacey Dooley asks in her newest documentary.
The presenter finds she herself shoplifted as a youngster, as a part of the BBC programme on the upward push in retail robbery in the United Kingdom.
Dooley explains she would thieve eyeliner and mascara at round 13 or 14 years outdated.
“It could had been disingenuous to not point out it” within the documentary, she says.
“There is now not an international the place I may just take a seat right here and check out and justify it, you recognize, there was once no explanation why, there was once little need for me to be available in the market behaving like that.”
She provides that she “wasn’t fascinated with the ladies at the store ground” and “wasn’t fascinated with anyone else as opposed to myself”.
The documentary-maker spent 8 months having a look into the upward push in shoplifting in the United Kingdom – and says “shoplifting hasn’t ever been extra prolific than it’s now”.
And this comes as retail robbery and violence and abuse against store staff is emerging, in keeping with the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
According to the most recent weighted BRC-Opinium survey with 2,000 members, the BRC estimates nearly 1 / 4 (24%) of the United Kingdom inhabitants witnessed shoplifting within the one year to February 2025.
In Meet the Shoplifters, Dooley asks shoplifters about their motivations. Some see it as an act of defiance in opposition to large companies, whilst others say they to find it “actually degrading” however do it to get such things as nappies and milk for his or her kids.
One shoplifter Dooley spoke to, as an example, was once a mom stealing milk and bread to feed her kid. “She was once riddled with guilt,” Dooley says of the mummy. “It was once out of sheer desperation.”
Tom Holder from the BRC says shoplifting in the United Kingdom is changing into worse and worse, including: “We are now simply achieving new heights. Folks assume that they may be able to escape with it, with out outcome.”
The hot BRC survey additionally estimates 23% of shoppers witnessed the bodily or verbal abuse of store personnel within the 12 months to February 2025. This will come with racial or sexual abuse, bodily attack or threats with guns.
Dooley spoke to retail employee Dips, who works in a cosmetics retailer in Manchester, and says “as each and every 12 months has long past on, it has got worse for us”.
“It isn’t a victimless crime. Someone all the time can pay the fee for it down the road. And for us, it is the personnel in right here,” she provides.
Dooley additionally explains how shoplifting is being documented on social media. “We now have observed store assistants be, you recognize, verbally abused, bodily abused,” she says.
Helen Dickinson, the manager government of the BRC, provides that whilst an incident can also be “over in a question of seconds”, it might probably have “life-long penalties” on those that revel in it, making them consider carefully about visiting their native top streets.
When chatting with shoplifters, Dooley says a few of them “do not even see it as against the law, essentially”.
And he or she provides that on social media, some other people use hashtags to supply different shoplifters recommendation.
However shoplifting price UK shops £2bn in 12 months, in keeping with a up to date estimate.
And Holder says shoplifting places power on retail costs, including: “That cash has to come back from someplace, so it finally ends up being unfold throughout the entirety that we purchase.”
