The Channel 5 documentary, Shoplifters: at War with the Law is running for a second series. It shows security at work (mainly plain-clothes detectives from the private firm TM-Eye in London; and uniformed patrollers around West Orchards mall in Coventry city centre).
While a rare and refreshing showing of the work of private security, inevitably much was left unsaid and unexplained. Such as, the £200 threshold. To recap; it arose from section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. To quote from the Home Office’s (long-delayed) response in July 2020 to its own call for evidence about violence and abuse against shop staff, ‘the shoplifting of goods valued up to £200 is a summary offence unless the defendant, if an adult, elects to be tried in the crown court …. Some respondents considered that this change in the law had created the impression among offenders that shoplifting, where the value of goods stolen is less than £200, would not be dealt with by the police. Some respondents also felt that this was one of the contributory factors behind increased brazenness among offenders.”
To return to the documentary. In London, a ‘gang’ (to use the documentary’s term for the three suspects) had been caught with meat. They were detained in the back office of an unnamed shop (you could gather later that it was M&S). As the documentary set out, the procedure was for the staff to count the value of what the thieves had been caught up. It amounted to £141 (which is a substantial amount of meat). The staff took it for granted that as it was below the ‘threshold’, police would not automatically be called. Instead, the suspects were offered a choice; either pay at the till and go free, or go to a police station.
One of the three asked, and was allowed, to leave the premises to make a phone call, to get the money from someone else (presumably another member of the criminal gang?). Note that the staff weren’t seeking to identify that other person, and how could police try to? And note that all this time the criminals are taking up staff time, which adds to the cost of loss prevention which has to be paid by higher prices for the law-abiding.
We did later see ‘red caps’, uniformed patrollers of a business improvement district, on the scene; but still not police. The incident ended with the suspects offering to pay £95 and going back to the tills – but not being allowed a receipt, presumably to guard against the suspects trying to get a refund. Also the suspects as they were led through the department store to the food hall till were told to keep their hands to themselves – in other words, not to pilfer off the displays of clothes. The staff, then, understood well that they were dealing with professional thieves. The upshot, although not spelt out, was that the three suspects then went on their way.
Wouldn’t they be of interest to the police? Because to return to that call for evidence, section 176 ‘has no bearing on the ability of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute a person for theft from a shop, or on the courts’ powers to punish offenders’. In other words, police forces – in this case the Met – has chosen to set a rule that under a ‘threshold’ of £200, they won’t act.
Retail has long complained about the £200 limit.
As the official document added, the Crime and Policing Minister, then Boris Johnson henchman Kit Malthouse (pictured) ‘will write to PCCs [police and crime commissioners] and chief constables setting out that the theft of goods valued up to £200 from a shop should be prosecuted as a criminal offence and therefore should not constrain the ability of the police to arrest or prosecute someone in the way they feel is most appropriate’. And that letter was duly sent in September 2020.
While the documentary didn’t say when it was filmed, it appeared that people weren’t doing social distancing, and Mr Malthouse’s official line hadn’t made it to the bare holding room of an M&S department store. Whether filmed pre- or post-covid, we can judge for ourselves whether Mr Malthouse’s letter made the least difference. Or indeed whether it was sent for any purpose except to be ignored, for the Boris Johnson era was fundamentally about appearances rather than the more boring (and difficult) business of calling to account. Or admitting that far more crime goes on than the authorities will admit or condescend to even record, or that tax-payers will acknowledge for that would mean more funding for altogether more criminal justice.
