If you are a retailer, setting a policy for handling shoplifters isn’t simple. Do you call the police for every shoplifter, even a kid who pockets a box of crayons? What about a senior citizen taking some batteries? Do you treat first-timers the same as pros?
Wal-Mart has long been known for a very strict policy: call the police on anyone who takes anything. But that policy is over. Wal-Mart, which I am guessing may be the largest shoplifting target in history, is no longer prosecuting first-time shoplifter unless they are between 18 and 65 and have stolen more than $25 worth of stuff. According to today’s N.Y. Times, this change puts Wal-Mart in line with most other chains’ policies.
Why the change? Plainly, Wal-Mart had a strong preference for a zero-tolerance policy. But as it turned out, it was the economics — of their business and of policing — that produced the change.
For the store, the opportunity cost had come to severely outweigh the shoplifting cost. “J.P. Suarez, who is in charge of asset protection at Wal-Mart, said it was no longer efficient to prosecute petty shoplifters,” Michael Barbaro wrote in the Times. “‘If I have somebody being paid $12 an hour processing a $5 theft, I have just lost money,’ he said. ‘I have also lost the time to catch somebody stealing $100 or an organized group stealing $3,000.’”
But, although the article doesn’t quite say so, I am guessing it was the pressure from police departments that truly forced Wal-Mart’s hand. The Times quotes Don Zofchak, police chief in South Strabane Township, Pa., as saying that Wal-Mart “would arrest somebody for stealing a pair of socks. I felt we were spending an inordinate amount of time just dealing with Wal-Mart.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if police in many small cities and rural areas had stopped responding to Wal-Mart’s daily requests to pick up their shoplifters, or at least grumbled mightily about having to do so. Wal-Mart has taken lots of heat for lots of reasons over the years — including, for instance, the fact that many of its low-wage employees also receive public assistance, which has led some critics to say that the U.S. Government in effect subsidizes Wal-Mart’s business. I can imagine how its old shoplifting policy may have led to even more damaging criticism — that Wal-Mart has turned local police forces into Wal-Mart police forces, preventing them from doing their real jobs.
Wal-Mart is famously protective of its data, and I am sure it will not divulge much about how this new policy plays out. (The Times article, e.g., was based on internal documents leaked to the paper by WakeUpWal-Mart.com, “a group backed by unions that have tried to organize Wal-Mart workers in the U.S.”) But if for someone could figure out exactly how and when each Wal-Mart store changes its shoplifting policy, and how many fewer times it calls the police, it would be really interesting to see what else the police in those places end up doing: do they make more arrests for drunken driving or domestic abuse or meth distribution?
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Having grown up in the type of small town that is Walmart’s bread and butter, I would guess that the local teen age drivers should drive a little more careful today.
A survey of the local newspaper (which prints every arrest and traffic stop) makes it seem at least, like the police in the Walmart towns spent most of their time writing tickets for speeding and rolling through stop signs.
Not that these towns dont have equivalent drug abuse rates… any data on this Dr. Dubner?
— proalesMy money’s on increased donut sales.
— turbosaabWal-Mart’s policy makes sense in some respects. But then, I’m thinking of the way fare-beaters are treated on the New York subway. Some time ago the police were pretty lax about enforcement, but during the early years of the Giuliani administration began a crackdown on fare-beaters and greatly increased the number of arrests and citations.
Not only did this policy change reduce the rate of fare-beating, but there’s strong evidence that it also reduced the rate of serious crime. When the police stopped fare-beating suspects they searched them for weapons and checked for any outstanding arrest warrants. It turned out that a very high percenage - if I recall correctly, something north of 50% - of the people detained for fare-beating had outstanding warrants, sometimes for very serious violent crimes, and a smaller but non-insignificant percentage were carrying weapons. Strict enforcement of a minor crime therefore ended up taking quite a few dangerous people off the streets.
The relevance to Wal-Mart’s new policy should be clear. Calling the police on everyone caught shoplifting allows the suspects to be checked for weapons and warrants. I’ve no doubt that it’s not at all uncommon for this to lead to further arrests and hopefully the prevention of some serious crimes. By electing not to call the police, however, Wal-Mart is in effect ensuring that the shoplifting suspects won’t be checked for outstanding warrants, as unless I’m quite mistaken only law enforcement agencies have the authority to run warrant checks. I don’t know if the Wal-Mart security staffers will check the suspects for weapons, but most likely the answer is again no.
— prosaproales: i had no idea dubner got his PhD…when was the ceremony?
— mhertzI wonder how many more petty thefts will occur once people figure out that the policy in a given store has changed? I’m also surprised that Wal-Mart has such a clear-cut new shoplifting policy and makes it public. After all, it could well be more beneficial to prosecute random shoplifters outside the normal range (and make that information public)as a deterrent. There is probably a more complex equation here, and I’d be surprised if Wal-Mart didn’t have a team of people analyzing it further.
— Logical ExtremesI just won’t steal anything over $24.99 now. Does that $25 figure include tax??
— JoshI am a walmart associate. I have went to the Emergency room yesterday just to be told I had the flu and was taking it worse than others. They gave me a not saying i wasn’t allowed to be around people for 3 days which included work/school. I called personnel to let them know. They told me that it would count as an absence anyway. Why do i get punished for trying to keep others from getting the flu? With a doctors note too. I don’t understand this at all, there has to be something against this. of all the times i have called in I have been sick, and I don’t have a super power to not get sick. I get sick more than 3 times a year. Probably from people at work that are afraid of losing their jobs for being sick. What can be done about this? If i go to work with the flu, associates and customers are at risk, and the flu is very serious, could end up in death if not properly rested and taken care of. Is there anyway around this? Or will I just get into trouble and possibly fired.
— Lisa