A Home Office file at the National Archives at Kew in west London covers a mid-1980s crime prevention study of a prominent West End shop. It includes also a snapshot of another retail chainโs security.
On April 18, 1985, the Home Office researcher Dr Paul Ekblom and his superviser Dr Gloria Laycock (who both have since become professors) visited John Hurrell, chief of security at Marks & Spencer, and his assistant, Michael Ollerton, at M&S head office in Baker Street in London W1. The file HO 287/3564 has a record of what the researchers called the M&S menโs โorthodox line on detectivesโ. M&Sโ 400 store detectives made some 14,600 โapprehensionsโ in a year, which accounted for most of the cases of violence โ 47 in 1983, and 117 in 1984. Who was violent was hard to stereotype, M&S reported; women, even old women, might be as violent as men. M&S spoke also of how if a young, black male was arrested; his friends would gather and try to rescue him. Most retailers would approach offenders on the pavement (we might add, for legal reasons; then someone had taken goods out of the store, without payment). M&S, especially in areas it deemed violent or โtoughโ allowed its detectives to approach a suspect before they left a store. The retailer had issued security staff and some other staff with portable hand alarms.
About the detectives
M&S trained 50 store detectives each year, who worked for three months alongside an experienced detective before working on their own. Mainly they came from the contractor Group 4 (now G4S). The retailer let go of detectives at the age of 45; otherwise, turnover was very low.
Paternalistic
The researchers heard that detectives never really fitted into the โrather paternalistic organisation; as much because of their personalities, as because their role kept them at a distance from other staff (who the detectives might be monitoring, for theft at the tills). M&S spent ยฃ5.4m a year on security; the average detective picked up 64 offenders a year; some 85 per cent of them were prosecuted. Many stores only had one detective; two stores were having no detectives, as an experiment. The retail chain was also experimenting with CCTV.
Punishment
Ekblom wrote afterwards of M&Sโ โpunishment oriented approachโ. Maybe professional gangs were travelling the UK to exploit the chainโs โAchilles heelโ; its refund policy. The retailer found a variety of procedures towards shop theft by police; some forces only gave cautions. To M&S, this was a problem.
Some background
Crime (rising) and more broadly ‘law and order’ was a recurring political issue in the Margaret Thatcher years. As prime minister she chaired a seminar on crime prevention in January 1986, which included shop theft (for a separate file from the archives, click this link).
