09.00 Registration

09.30 Chairman’s opening remarks

09.40 Protecting profit: pushing loss prevention up the agenda in 2008
Carol Kaye, profit protection controller, Focus DIY

10.20 Cultivating a strong loss-prevention culture
Lewis Porter, head of security and investigations, Phones 4U

10.50 Examining shrinkage beyond the shop floor
Ian Cherry, group loss prevention director, WHSmith

11.20 Morning refreshments

11.50 Investing in physical deterrents for product protection
Mick Phipps, head of loss prevention, Wilkinson

12.20 The problem of transit
Mike Smith, Former Head of shrinkage and distribution security, Tesco

12.50 Lunch

13.50 How can retailers work with the police?
Stephen Govier, Lambeth business crime prevention co-ordinator
Colin Culleton, head of risk and loss prevention, HMV
Phillip Hagon qpm, head of corporate security, Sainsbury’s
James Sirett, detective superintendent, Metropolitan Police

14.20 Afternoon refreshments

14.50 Joining up with other businesses and agencies to combat retail crime
Geoffrey Northcott, head of risk management, Borders UK

15.20 Following up on fraud and theft
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director,
Centre for Retail Research

15.50 Chair’s closing remarks

16.00 End of conference

Cutting retail crime

Retail Week has campaigned relentlessly for the authorities to take retail crime seriously. After a long consultation over sentencing guidelines for shoplifting, the option to imprison persistent shoplifters who intimidate retailers or use violence against them was thankfully retained.

But there is still the feeling in the industry that retail crime – particularly persistent and organised shoplifting – is not taken seriously. In the US, retailers have found that evidence gathered through technology such as CCTV and data-mining systems allows retailers to detect not only crime that is occurring. They have also been used to prove that the theft is organised and that punishments should be more severe than those for so-called “casual shoplifters”.

The panel discussion at the Loss Prevention conference will examine how retailers can work more closely with the police to reduce retail crime.

Loss prevention panel

At the end of 2007, Nottingham’s Centre for Retail Research released the first ever Global Retail Theft Barometer.

It has estimated that the global costs of retail crime (the cost of theft by customers, disloyal employees and suppliers and vendors, plus the cost of loss prevention) has reached US$108.1 billion (£55 billion). In Europe, loss prevention spending now accounts for 0.34 per cent of retail sales.

Catching thieves requires evidence and, increasingly, retailers are turning to technology to be the eyes and ears of their loss-prevention departments.

Retailers apprehended almost 6 million store thieves in the year the report covered. European retailers apprehended 3.55 million of this total, with the overriding majority being external thieves.

Only 1.9 per cent of European thieves were employees. But the average employee-theft incident in Europe cost US$5,145 (£2,603), reflecting a trend of large financial frauds being committed internally.

One technology that retailers are planning to use more to deter external thieves is tagging, and specifically security tags that are applied at source, rather than in-store. By the end of the decade, 69.3 per cent of large retailers in Europe are expected to source-tag merchandise.

The average number of product lines that are source tagged is 219 in Europe.

Centre for Retail Research director Joshua Bamfield has said that the report’s findings show that lower shrink rates are the result of strategy, policy and investment, rather than factors relating to the natural environment.

Joshua Bamfield will be speaking at the Loss Prevention conference on June 26.