Retail lobby retracts claims about shoplifting/retail crime

@tinman won't be happy about this.

 

@Ubiquitin
@ROXRAN
@AroundTheWorld
Well they are right
Nobody loots the Reebok store

Breh just got some Jordans !!
Don’t matter what size lol

 

In other words, companies made some poor decisions and tried to blame it on the hoods doing hood rat stuff. Then data happened.

 

I read this and it's more of a semantic gotcha.

They focus on Organized Retail Crime which was grossly inaccurate when "external theft" like individual shoplifting boosts the overall estimate to 37%.

The presentation in the articles is noteworthy. You have to sift out all the numbers if you aren't careful.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html
https://nypost.com/2022/09/30/rite-aid-executives-bemoan-out-of-control-nyc-shoplifting-at-stores/

I would've thought the nypost article would latch onto the 50% claim, but they focused on the 37% for External Theft, whereas the Times led with the 50% for ORC and buried the 37% ET while giving the remark of "a figure that would still be billions of dollars less than the incorrect estimate of 50 percent made in April." That's a common marketing tactic to mess with people's abstract estimations and sizing.

I liked the NYT quote though:

In January, an executive at the company said that Walgreens might have overstated the effects on its business, saying: “Maybe we cried too much last year.”​

 

They based it on a single source that was 2 years old (a source that has inherent bias). The estimates from other sources are too "noisy." My conclusion: while there is a significant "shrink" issue (inventory loss), the data isn't of high enough fidelity to estimate how much of it is due to organized crime.
NRF's reputation took a hit.

 

It’s not organized crime when everyone steals
cause the cities or state do nothing

 

Yeah, sure but most folks want numbers/fax/data from 5-10 min articles promoting that same headline.

By using your counterpoint, both articles are fluffy because when you remove NRF data/references, neither gave me the straight dope on External Theft. Which means both provided lot of side info that may or may not be "noise" to fit a specific narrative or premise.

 

The default assumption is "noise" unless supported by good data. If you have reliable data, you would typically acknowledge or publish it. Since this wasn't the case in the retraction, I revert to the default assumption.

ps. I work a bit with data collection—sometimes it occurs unintentionally. However, to uncover specific information, data collection is intentionally designed for that purpose. If you lack certain knowledge after collection, it's often because the data wasn't initially designed to address that particular question.

 

There’s video cameras at every store

it’s not like the predator is going into Walgreens and stealing all the Revlon products

plus he can’t cause the products to be cloaked only him and his spaceship
@Xerobull

 

it’s good to know that the criminals like to post their evidence with pure joy on tik tok

it’s not organized crime
It’s just crime with lots of views and emojis
@basso
@Os Trigonum
@Trader_Jorge

 

Petty theft follows the Gini coefficient pretty closely.

In other words, it's not being poor that causes crime. It's being poor and living near/around people who are very much not poor.

A lack of police involvement or city hall/DA doesn't have much to do with it.

It's just not logistically feasible to put a cop in every storefront and run every shoplifter through the courts. It would bankrupt every municipal budget and choke the legal system to death. This has always been true, btw, it's only recently that the economy and wealth inequality has gotten so out of hand that we have people basically giving up on participating in fair, organized society (via rampant shoplifting).

There's only one way out of this, and it isn't "MORE LAW AND ORDER". Fix the money, fix the world.

 

Nobody is looting Reebok or Puma stores
Or especially the people on video , the Lane Bryant and weight watchers store
@basso
@Jontro
@Os Trigonum

 

Which is why I hate these kind of articles. I would've posted it on here if I just read the headine. I was planning on adding a poll for people to submit what was the percentage of ET for the "real number" instead of the 50%.

Think tanks and interest groups have long learned that you don't only attack/support the narrative through media channels but also the sourcing and research (tobacco/fossil fuel denialism). Your bolded claim might be from unintentional or haphazard reasons, but those ****ers know exactly what they're doing.

I don't have time to always care about the details, but that means I'm consuming from a trough that doesn't always have all natural ingredients.

 

Sometime there is nothing you can do about it.

You always want to reduce inventory loss, but is it really a huge new problem? Social media screams "yes", but NRF data shows it hasn't changed that much over the last 7 years. Businesses factor in these losses as "expected" loss.

NRF | National Retail Security Survey 2023

Inventory Loss & Shrinkage:

Shrink or shrinkage is the measurement of losses calculated by a retailer during a specific period of time, categorized across various means of retail loss. Measured as a percentage of sales, shrink percentage often includes losses caused by both internal and external theft, operational or process mistakes and systemic errors. On average, retailers reported inventory shrink of 1.6%, which is slightly up from last year and in line with shrink rates in 2019 and 2020

 

It's an education problem, a family problem (lack of fathers at home), and a financial opportunity problem. People who have something to live for (family, house, good job) tend to behave. Many inner city youth have problems with impulse control, which causes many problems -- including but not limited to poor performance in school, being overweight, spending money they don't have, drug use, and crime. They want the short term fix. Sadly, these people have no long term plan that they are working towards. Because they have less to lose, they are willing to commit crime.

The best way to help these people is to create jobs that provide family-sustaining income and to punish crime. Unfortunately, the approach taken in most cities has been handouts and bailouts (of jail). Obviously it's not working well.

 

See, I told y'all that @tinman would not be happy. No surprise he is posting videos and @'ing everyone now lol.

 

Rudy Giuliani and NYC in the 90s disagree.