Preventing Shoplifting 

in the Buckland / Orford / Triabunna Area

Getting Started  

We took on this Crime Stoppers Challenge at the suggestion of some of our class members who felt that it was a very interesting topic. The whole class was involved.

Our class discussed shoplifting and what they knew about it.  Most of our class members had stories to share about times they had been involved with shoplifting.  Here are two personal examples.

One time my cousin and I went to the chip shop and we ordered some chips.  When the lady went to put the chips in the frying pan my cousin got a bunch of Mars Bars out of the rack.  When we got the chips my cousin gave some to me.

One day I went into a supermarket with my mum and my sister.  When we went in my sister and I went over to the lollies and had a look around.  We had our own money.  I didn’t have enough to buy a Jungle Chew so I hid behind a shelf and stuffed it in my pocket and then I went and asked mum if I could have the car keys.  I went and sat in the car and ate it.  When mum came out my sister told her that I had shoplifted and I got in BIG TROUBLE.

We looked at some of the police files on the Crime Stoppers website and started asking ourselves some questions.  We had many group discussions about the topic of shop-lifting in general.  We listed our findings.  Many of these things were just our own opinions.

Why is shop-lifting wrong?

• It is illegal to steal.
• It is morally wrong to take something that is not yours.
• If everybody stole from shops there wouldn’t be much left to sell.
• It is unfair to the shop owner.
• A shop could lose so much stock it might have to go out of business.
• You could be sent to gaol or a detention centre.
• You could ruin your future.  There are some jobs you aren’t allowed to do if you have a police record.
• It would be embarrassing to your family.
• Your parents would be very disappointed in you.
• People would hear about it and you would get a bad reputation.

Why do people steal from shops?

• They want things they can’t afford to have.
• They want things their parents say they can’t have.
• They want to look cool and fashionable to impress their friends.
• They are trying to “act cool” in front of their friends.
• Someone might bully them and make them feel that they have to.
• They do it for the thrill of doing something a bit risky.
• They do it as a dare.
• Their friends do it and they want to “blend in”.
• They want something but don’t want to part with their money.
• They feel that the shop owes them something.
• They can’t be bothered lining up at the checkout.
• It can become a habit.
• They want to deliberately get caught and get some attention from someone.
• Children see their parents and older siblings steal and think it is okay.
• It is too easy to do most of the time.
• Things are out on display and easy to take.

Our Research

We did an anonymous survey of students in our class, asking the question: “Have you personally ever stolen from a shop?”  We shocked ourselves with the response.  Of the 23 students in our class, 20 students (all except three) admitted to having stolen something from a shop at least once in their lives.  It was mainly sweets stolen from local shops or small toys or nick-knacks taken from large stores like Chickenfeed.  One student said he personally hadn’t stolen but had helped a friend who had stolen eat the loot.  The class agreed that it should count as a ”yes”.

We realised that we only had our own experiences to tell us about the shoplifting problems in our local community.  We put our heads together and came up with a questionnaire that we could take around the local shopkeepers to find out some facts.

Shoplifting in Our Neighbourhood

Students personally took the questionnaires to shops near their houses in their own time either singly or in pairs.  They discussed the questionnaire with the shopkeeper and waited while they were filled in.  They then brought the results back to the rest of the class and the situation was discussed.  Jason and Sam collated the results and these graphs show what we found.

Recommendations

Shop Keepers Perspective

It is obvious from these results that shoplifting is a common problem in our neighbourhood.  Our students asked shopkeepers about ways they thought their own problems with shoplifters could be solved.

Here are some of their replies:

• Put in security cameras.
• Have staff make their presence felt by offering customers assistance.
• Let it be known in the community that our shop will take action when we catch offenders.
• Make sure that parents and schools give guidance to children on the consequences of shoplifting.
• Let people realise the effect shoplifting has on the shop owners who are trying to provide a service in the area and make a living.
• Teach children respect for others’ property.
• Make people leave their bags at the door.
• The only way to prevent shoplifting is to keep absolutely everything under lock and key!
• We don’t know a solution because we’re still working on it!
• There’s no way to prevent shoplifting!  

Police Perspective

We interviewed local Police Officer, Mr Tony Buckingham about the problem of shoplifting in our area.  He had good advice for us and some interesting experiences to relate to us.  Most of his advice is the same as the advice that our students wrote at the end of this unit of work.

What Can We Do Personally?

Students' Perspective

We closely studied the reasons for shop-lifting that we came up with and sorted them into wider categories.  This is the more condensed list.

Why Do People Shop-Lift?

• Desire to have what others have.
• Peer pressure
• For thrills, to get attention or because it’s a habit.
• It’s too easy.

We felt that there were some things on our list that we could not have much input into.

The fact that shoplifting is too easy is really something that the shopkeepers themselves have to deal with.  They need to do everything within their power to make shoplifting so difficult or so unattractive that it doesn’t happen in their store.  Just hoping that human beings will have consciences and “do the right thing” isn’t going to work.

People who shoplift for attention or for thrills probably have psychological problems relating to more than just shoplifting and need professional help.

However, people wanting things they can’t afford is possibly affected by peer pressure and the desire to have the same things as our friends and it’s the people who shop-lift because of peer pressure or because it is a “cool thing to do” are the ones we really can do something about.  Because some of those people are us!

As a result of our research in this Crime Stoppers Challenge, our class has been doing some extra work on peer pressure, how to recognise it and how to avoid being part of it.  Class members shared examples of times that they had felt their actions, right or wrong, were a result of peer pressure.  Here are a couple of examples that people shared with us.

When I was in Grade 3 there was a big craze for Digimons.  People who didn’t have Digimons were called uncool or old-fashioned.  My cousin laughed at me because I didn’t have one and I felt really out of things.

After I first came to this school some of the girls were teaching me who’s cool and who’s not.  It was like there was an invisible list that everyone kept in their heads. . There was only one person on the “not cool” list and I felt sorry for her.  I didn’t want to think like this about people but I went along with it because I didn’t want to be added to the “not cool” list myself.

We studied articles about peer pressure and how to avoid it.  One thing we discussed at length was “Choose your friends wisely”.  We came up with these ideas for avoiding getting into trouble through peer pressure.

• Choose friends with similar values to yours.
• Don’t hang out with individual people or groups that you know do the wrong things.
• Avoid situations where you can feel pressured by others.
• If you’re being bullied, talk to an adult you trust.
• Learn by your mistakes.

 Overall the advice from us to ourselves is… choose your friends wisely!

We also brainstormed to try to find some suggestions to help the local shopkeepers.  Here is the list that we came up with.

• Improve visibility in shops.
• Lock away small tempting things behind the counters.
• Have a buzzer that rings when people come into or go out of the shop.
• Don’t just have staff standing at the checkout.  Have them always patrolling the aisles.
• Have mirrors or cameras or see-through windows so that customers feel they are being watched.
• Make sure you have enough staff to watch the whole shop closely and to be seen watching.
• Ask the local police to call in and “be seen” at popular shoplifting times.
• Discourage children from hanging around the shop when a parent does not accompany them.
• Put up a warning about what happened to the last person who was caught shoplifting at that shop.
• Keep all lollies behind a glass case and out of the reach of kids.
• Don’t let people take bags into the shop with them.
• Make a big fuss about the first person you catch stealing so that everyone else gets to hear that stealing from your shop is not a good idea.
• Put up lots of signs to remind people that shoplifting is an offence and offenders will be charged.
• Have low shelves or see-through shelves so people are visible all the time.
• Put smaller items in bigger packaging.
• Don’t put small items in quiet corners.  

Advice to Other 10 - 12 Year Olds

We have thought a lot about this topic.  Class members wrote some advice for other people their age about stealing.  Read what we wrote and hopefully think twice before you steal something.

Article for Local Newspaper

An article about our activities was reported by our local newspaper, "The Central Coast Courier". We thought that this was the best way to inform our local community of our findings.  Here is a copy of the text of that article.

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