Retail Violence and Abuse

According to the British Retail Consortium, there has been a 50% increase in levels of retail violence and abuse last year • Costs of thefts doubled to £1.8bn in 2022/23 • There are over 45,000 incidents of retail crime every single day in stores across the UK • This is despite retailers spending £1.2bn on crime prevention and security measures • At present, police do not turn up for 70% of the incidents of retail crime that the Co-op report – these reports only include serious incidents • When using the powers of citizens arrest to detain individual offenders in these incidents, when calling the police to complete an arrest of a detained individual they do not turn up in 80% of cases – at which point the individual is let go