Shoplifting and Pilfering:Risks to Individuals and Society
While stealing is considered a major sin forbidden even by the Ten Commandments, shoplifting and pilfering are more often seen, in common young people parlance, as forgivable tricks, or jokes, or brags to be proud of. The criminal activity is often described by slang nicknames that seem to disguise its reprehensible character. Home Surveillance and Security Click on Course Invitation. But first: If you want to profit from getting many good new marketing ideas, to push your regular results to a higher level, it is recommended that you explore the following: Dan Kennedy's "Ultimate Information Entrepreneur Super Manual" Dan Kennedy’s "New Marketing, Direct Marketing & Success Super Conference" Dan Kennedy's "Lifetime of Secrets Bootcamp" Home-Study Course (Sponsored Links) Unfortunately this is not true. While the dictionary explains that pilfering is stealing stealthily in small amounts, it remains a censurable wrongdoing. If caught, many occasional pilferers and shoplifters do not know how to explain their unjustifiable impulse. If convicted, their punishment may change and worsen their life in unendurable ways. Modern society, that exalts earthly possession of consumer goods as representing happiness, with its cynical messages unfortunately does not offer to troubled youth great examples to pursue. Society seems to judge mercilessly those who steal a loaf of bread because of hunger, while sophisticated thieves funneling millions of public money to their pockets are often getting off cheaply, enjoying a leniency they don't deserve. Shoplifting or theft of goods from a retail establishment by an innocent looking customer is one of the most common crimes for police and courts. Stores and shops know by experience that Shoplifting and pilfering represent liabilities too serious to be overlooked. Suitable defensive measures for preventing and/or detecting Shoplifting must be put in place to reduce those losses. Closed circuit television (CCTV) monitoring is an important and preferred anti-shoplifting technology. Unfortunately using CCTVs to take shoplifters in the act is a labor intensive job that requires continuous monitoring of the cameras. See Camera Systems Automatic alerting by devices or software to discriminate suspicious customer activity cannot yet be fully relied on. Therefore there is still no acceptable way to dispose of surveillance personnel. Another quite popular accessory designed to emit an alarm is called Electronic Article Surveillance and consists in security tags attached to merchandise. The tags are meant to be removed or inactivated by cashiers at checkout points. Upon passing near detector posts at the shop exit the tags generate an audible alarm, that should cause guards to confront customers and challenge them about items unpaid for. Other measures that establishments may use is a force of employees mixed with the shopping crowd and indistinguishable from them, whose job is to look around for possible shoplifters. The presence of uniformed guards may acts as a deterrent to Shoplifting. They are employed usually by retail establishments dealing with expensive items.They may also perform a check of their purchases against the register tape, the customer resisting this request looking as someone with something to conceal. Some shops prefer to instruct their employees to greet the customer and to offer their help, in view of discouraging shoplifters from realizing their plan. Other techniques involve locking expensive items out of reach, requiring an employee to be attained and possibly to be collected, after purchase, at the checkout desk. The display may include only empty boxes, the real things to be obtained only through the clerks. One important resolution is to employ surveillance personnel trained and instructed on how to look for shoplifters and how to apprehend them. The surveillance equipment and the alertness of employees and of surveillance staff should be tested every now and then by means of programmed exercises. Shops and commercial enterprises run also other dangers of wrongdoing like pilfering committed by regular employees, especially by those having authority to spend money or to purchase in name of the company. A strict policy should be designed to keep a check on common practices, by using simple and effective control measures. Regular job rotation should be implemented for purchasing agents and for other critical positions, not to give to these employees time and opportunity to establish long time relationships with unscrupulous vendors. Supervision should be conducted closely, to check the performance and the actions, especially purchases, of each employee, to look for suspicious patterns. Separation of duties is an effective control measure. Therefore one should strive to charge different persons with handling the duties of vendor approval, purchase requisitions, purchase approval, receiving and payment. The best prevention to reduce losses deriving from Shoplifting and pilfering is to keep customers honest, by implementing all suitable means and advertising their presence and functionality. For running successfully the enterprise, one should employ only honest people, but in our imperfect world one must be prepared to introduce a clear policy that leaves no space to deceitful conduct. We read a sad story (1) concerning an unfortunate employee, a Purchasing Manager, that was induced by a vendor to accept a bribe and then, because of a difficult situation at home, continued to involve himself more and more in that dangerous path. He was finally discovered and convicted with no mercy. It is true that suitable punishment like dismissing him should have been administered. But it seems that in this case the jail and the fine were over killing on the part of the Company, that acted with vengeance. In fact they should have taken upon themselves part of the blame for not having implemented in time those tardy measures that, had they been in place beforehand, would have prevented the poor employee from destroying himself and his family. (1) - The Case of the Pilfering Purchasing Manager For any questions write us by e-mail using the Contact Us Form.
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