The shoplifting epidemic has become ‘anti-capitalist inspo’ for well-off Gen-Zers

Is there anything we can’t gentrify? It seems that the £2.2bn shoplifting epidemic has had a profound effect on the UK’s middle classes as we roll into what is likely to be another record year for the five-finger discount.  

Over the month, three important pieces of data were published and together they paint a colourful picture of how the rise in organised shoplifting gangs and the publicity surrounding them has infected our national psyche.  

The first set of data gives us the scale of the problem and how quickly it’s growing. The British Retail Consortium found that more than 20 million incidents of theft were committed in the year to August 31 2024, which equates to 55,000 a day, costing retailers a total £2.2bn. That’s up from 16 million incidents in the prior year.  

Secondly, we have some figures from Socure that reveal that half of wealthy Gen-Z and millennial Americans admit to ‘digital shoplifting’ – where they dupe online retailers into giving them a refund by claiming they never received the item or never placed the order in the first place. 63% of first-party fraud offenders felt that large retailers could afford to cover the cost of disputed legitimate claims, and staggeringly, within the two demographic groups, the most likely culprits were those who earned over $100,000 a year.  

The final flourish is a survey from Toluna Harris Interactive, commissioned by our sister title The Grocer which revealed that 37% of customers have purposefully failed to scan at least one item when using self-service checkouts. 

Known as ‘Swipers’, a term coined by City University criminology professor Emmeline Taylor, these well-off shoppers only steal when using self-checkouts. The acronym stands for: “seemingly well-intentioned patrons engaging in regular shoplifting”.

These people “would not steal using any other technique, they’re not interested in putting chocolate down their pants or a piece of steak in their coat”, Taylor previously told The Times. Again, according to the study, people aged under 35 were the most likely to engage.  

These new findings suggest that for many young and reasonably well-off people – doing a bit of pinching here and there has become normalised. So how are they justifying it? According to TikTok comments, pocketing from big business is the perfect way to make a stand against capitalism. A favourite comment under #BorrowingTips videos (worded as such to get around content filters) is the new mantra: “If you see anyone shoplifting, no you didn’t”, in amongst the odd: “Wednesday is a good excuse to shoplift under capitalism”. 

Dazed magazine interviewed Gen-Z shoplifters and came away with a similar sentiment, that casually stealing is a way to overcome cost-of-living pressures while resisting capitalism. 19-year-old Mariana told the magazine: “I don’t believe that stealing from large corporations is immoral, as it detracts from systems that exploit its workers and resources for economic gain.” 

But what can be done about it? According to retail expert and chief executive of Savvy Catherine Shuttleworth, retailers have to work on building a real relationship with their shoppers. 

“The challenge of online and faceless transactions is that the relationships have no depth,” she says. 

“Waitrose love bombing customers at self-checkouts is an important tool in making a relationship at the self-scan, looking a customer in the eye and having real human connections will make a difference, and in high-end retailers we see security personnel opening locked doors, so maybe the return of a friendly greeter could make a difference.” 

Rightly, retailers have been investing in state-of-the-art tech and surveillance to deter as many would-be shoplifters as possible, but it’s clear that for this growing subset of shoplifters, targeting faceless corporations by adding a face to the business would go a long way too. 

Shuttleworth adds: “Retailers have a job to do in building that relationship up by demonstrating care for customers and explaining why good relationships are good for the shoppers and for business too”.