Imagine you are a security consultant for a large department store. Explain how you would target shoplifters. Include specific information about the psychological and demographic characteristics of shoplifters

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• Important to have target-hardening devices, such as cameras, ink tags on items, alarms on doors.
• Shoplifters, particularly professional shoplifters, have become skillful at overcoming or incapacitating security devices.
• Shoplifter "profiles" are helpful, but security personnel need to be cautious about profiling based on race or ethnicity.
• Although juveniles and adult women have traditionally been blamed for a majority of shoplifting, research shows that men as well as women shoplift, and the offenders represent all age groups. Most are unlikely to consider the behavior wrong.
• Security personnel should be alert to extreme nervousness, aimless walking, looking around after picking up an item, or customers who leave and return to the store several times. These are typical characteristics of naïve shoplifters, however, not professionals.
• Today's professional shoplifters are organized and often work in groups; although they shoplift individually, they share their merchandise. They steal small items in large numbers for resale value, and they often know where security devices are planted and the work schedules of security personnel.
• Returning merchandise for cash is a common technique. Shoplifters find receipts in parking lots, enter the store, secure an item, and attempt to "return it" for cash. Placing security personnel in parking lots may be an effective deterrent.