Relationship between retailers and criminal justice system “needs resetting”

Edwards has praised the ongoing collaboration between the police and the NBCS aimed at tackling organised cross-border retail criminality and the co-operation around Government-backed initiatives such as Operation Pegasus/Opal, wherein leading High Street brands are bank-rolling greater retail crime intelligence gathering such that law enforcement resources may be better deployed.

However, ahead of the NBCS Conference to be at Old Trafford on 7 March, Edwards argues that the underfunding of law enforcement as a result of years of Government austerity has created a ‘broken window’ syndrome around town centres whereby low police visibility has emboldened the tendency towards brazen High Street offending.

“NBCS statistics show that 82% of offences are committed by just over 20% of offenders,” asserted Edwards, “while other figures demonstrate that these offenders are being caught and convicted of stealing up to 50 times before they’re being jailed. Now, imagine how many actual offences must they commit before that occurs.”

He added: “Only 11% of reported offences have seen offenders brought to justice. This includes cautions, penalty notices and court appearances. Penalties for entering a bus lane are greater than for shop theft. You can walk in any town centre on any day and be almost guaranteed to witness a traffic enforcement officer or parking attendant. Why? They bring in revenue.”

A record 11 million parking tickets were issued last year, in turn delivering over £1 billion for local authorities. Edwards observed: “I remind Government that the retail sector pays for 10% of all business taxes and 25% of all business rates. We don’t demand special attention, just some attention.”

Forging partnerships

Edwards has praised the efforts of the Co-op in working with the NBCS to establish business partnerships through the NBCS Connect Direct service in those police areas experiencing high crime rates. To date, this effort has resulted in 167 offenders being dealt with across 14 forces.

Further, that targeted work has resulted in offenders being sentenced to a total of 472 months in prison, 412 suspended sentences and 80 years’ worth of criminal behaviour orders being handed down as well as 17 rehabilitation orders for those with drug or alcohol dependency issues.

The ambition, though, is to build a more collegiate arrangement across all of the 43 police forces with whom the NBCS has data sharing agreements.

Edwards commented: “The Prime Minister is claiming a 15% reduction in reported crime in the UK, although he omitted to mention shop theft reports are the highest they’ve been for a long time, while losses due to retail crime estimates are at almost £8 billion. Let me offer an explanation as to why reported crime could be down. Quite simply, it’s too difficult to report. When it is reported, there’s very little in the way of police response anyway. On average, it takes roughly 25 minutes for store managers to report a crime. When they receive no response, you cannot blame them for asking themselves what’s the point of doing so.”

He continued: “We all know about the knife threats made against retail employees. Estimates indicate that 400 retail colleagues are threatened with violence every day. This situation isn’t helped when we learn that only four out of every ten offenders are actually prosecuted for possessing a bladed weapon.”

Lobbying Government

The British Retail Consortium is currently running a petition to lobby the Government for a separate offence of violence against retail workers and is looking for 100,000 signatures of support.

“We are receiving mixed signals,” asserted Edwards. “There are promises around improved police response and detection, but then in the recent King’s Speech it has been suggested prison sentences of less than 12 months will no longer apply, with a presumption for Judges that community sentences should be issued. What alternatives are there? Electronic tags? Curfews, perhaps?”

According to Edwards, statistics show that the majority of offenders on a curfew being ordered to stay at home for 12 hours per day breach such an order.

“The problem is that, as a country, we’ve ignored ‘low level’ offending. Where we’ve failed to deal with the low-level opportunist offending, this has now developed to become professional and organised theft. Just think about the ‘broken window’ theory.”

Edwards has quoted some instances of the “failing” judicial system. “A female serial offender with more than 390 previous convictions was given a one-day detention order on a recent court appearance, while a male offender with 291 previous convictions was allowed to walk free from court.”

He added: “Do we have a dysfunctional and defective criminal justice system, which is leading to career criminals? Maybe the answer to that question lies in the following statement. Despite representing only 9% of the six million people convicted of a criminal offence in England and Wales over the past 20 years, ‘prolific offenders’ account for nearly half of all convictions.”

Business Improvement Districts

Edwards, who has worked in the retail sector for over 30 years and in major UK plc businesses, has also focused his attentions on garnering more support from Business Improvement Districts.

“There’s no bigger problem affecting our High Streets than shop theft and violence and abuse, but we still sit back and allow the directors of each separate Business Improvement District to spend monies available to them on what they believe to be their priorities. We can change that status quo.”

Edwards concluded: “In my opinion, there are simply not enough ‘high-vis’ jackets acting as a deterrent patrolling our High Streets. As a collective, we can influence the Business Improvement Districts to spend money on safety and security and demand that they employ professional and trained security officers. We should then ask relevant chief constables to accredit those officers under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme such that they have some real authority to issue fixed penalty notices, demand names and addresses and assist in the detention of shop thieves.”

*Further information concerning the work of the NBCS is available online at www.nationalbusinesscrimesolution.com