Shop lifting is believed to be a victimless crime, not so, if any shop has a large theft problem staff are reduced and if this continues shops may close, writes the business crime partnership in Leicester, City Watch:
Leicester has a hard core of 44 prolific offenders who steal from shops in the city. Recently it has become apparent that shops are being targetted by thieves from all walks of life. It is believed that because there is no deterrant to steal that anyone is prepared to have a go. When offenders are detained by our over worked store guards/detectives, it takes in excess of 6 hours for our police to document and deal with these thieves, we need these offecers on the streets. There appears to be no shame in stealing in this day and age.
As a consequence of this City Watch has agreed with the Leicestershire Constabulary that they will publish the names, addresses and offences of convicted shop thieves on both of their web sites. This will be accessible globally, have a look at the sites to see if your relatives, friends, neighbours are thieves, hopefully this may shame some and there will be a noticable decrease in thefts from shops. The City Watch web site is currently being updated to site these offenders in the news section, under a heading monthly offenders or something similar, currently it is on the news page. The first offenders are there to view now. Have a look and see if you are acqaunted with any of the offenders. It is hoped in the near future that images of the offenders will appear with their details. We are first Nationally to do this and hopefully other cities and towns will follow our lead, we have to try something.
