Robert Jenrick is back on patrol. In a video released this morning, he confronts multiple shoplifters. One man is accused of taking a bottle of Dr Pepper from Greggs without paying, and strolling back out. Jenrick asks him: why does he think he is above the law? Why should everyone else have to pay while he helps himself?
It is absurd to employ people to provide security and then create a legal and corporate environment in which all they can do is stand back and watch
In another demoralising detail, the shop worker – protected by a glass screen (another recent feature of retail life in this country) and presumably ground down by seeing such theft day in day out – looks unable to bring himself to care.
It is good to see a politician seizing the bull by the horns and seeking to expose the low-level criminality that is becoming endemic across the country. After Jenrick confronted those jumping the barriers on the Tube last year, the number of penalties issued to fare dodgers then increased by some 39 per cent, Sadiq Khan ostensibly having been shamed into action.
As ever, some of the reactions one comes across online can be soul-sapping. Some even thought Jenrick ‘irresponsible’ for taking the stand that he did: ‘The most dangerous anti-social person in this video is Robert Jenrick. Rather than receive the necessary training through working with His Majesty’s Police Force as a volunteer, Jenrick is setting a precedent for individuals acting outside the law. Reckless and irresponsible.’ Come to think of it he also failed to wear a lanyard while carrying out his act of despicable civic responsibility.
It is precisely this criminality that drove Greggs last year to announce it was trialling a new ‘fortress store’, where customers could no longer grab their own sandwiches and drinks but would have them handed over by staff at the till. This was introduced as some branches were being targeted by thieves every 20 minutes. The results of these anti-theft measures are longer queues and a more miserable experience for everyone.
Then there is the question of cost – and of course it is not just the stolen goods themselves that law-abiding citizens are being forced to cover. It is the security tags, the cages and the anti-theft shelf barriers that now protect even Cadbury’s chocolate in most London supermarkets. It is also the cost of the security. Theft, damage and crime prevention adds £54 to the shopping bills of the average household each year (assuming 100 per cent of the costs are passed on to consumers) according to the latest BRC figures – and that is likely an underestimate given it counts only known theft.
Let us consider further that question of security. We should be honest about what most retail security guards have become – ‘urban scarecrows’ – that stand there doing precisely nothing, while acting as a not particularly effective deterrent.
We need to strengthen the law. I spoke to Jenrick this morning who told me, ‘As soon as you stop enforcing basic laws, you’re on the road to anarchy. We have to shame these individuals and there must be consequences. The only way out of this problem is to build more prison spaces so we can lock up these prolific shoplifters. It’s also scandalous that security staff are losing their jobs for doing the right thing. They need the legal protection to be able to pin down thieves without being sued.’
He is right. There is, in theory, a right to intervene when one witnesses shoplifting. Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 allows reasonable force to be used to prevent crime. Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 also enables, in some cases, anyone to carry out a citizen’s arrest. But as we have so often seen, and as I have written about before in the cases of Waitrose and Morrisons, the law as applied in practice is insufficient to give shop workers or even security guards the confidence to step in without fearing for their jobs, or even the prospect of personal prosecution. It is absurd to employ people to provide security and then create a legal and corporate environment in which all they can do is stand back and watch.
Of course, this video lands just a day after Burnham’s government began releasing 700 prisoners early from jail, with several thousand more to follow. One newly-released inmate from down the road in HMP Brixton was asked what he planned to do with his newfound liberty. He responded: ‘I’m gonna go stealing again’.
Police-recorded shoplifting has risen by 55 per cent in just two years, from 342,000 offences in 2022-23 to 531,000 in 2024-25. If we do not get tough on low-level criminality, if we do not rally behind and support politicians like Jenrick trying to highlight this issue and shame the shoplifters, then ever more decent people in this country, paying through the nose for the weekly shop, will begin to question why they should even bother.
Enough is enough. It is time our society got behind the law-abiding and found the moral conviction to denounce the criminals. Those of us who pay for our groceries should not be made to feel like fools for doing so.
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