Ryan is 25 and a prolific shoplifter, stealing high-value items from department stores four times a week to resell for cash. He is part of a record surge in shoplifting offences in England and Wales, which reached 530,643 between March 2024 and March 2025—a 20% increase from the previous year and the highest since modern recording began in 2003. Media coverage often highlights struggling parents stealing nappies or elderly people unable to afford food, but career thieves like Ryan have different motivations.
The Reality of Career Shoplifters
Emily Kenway, a social policy researcher at the University of Edinburgh, interviewed several habitual shoplifters while studying how chronically homeless people generate income. Paul, 38, steals alcohol, meat, or cheese and seizes opportunistic thefts, like spotting unattended hairdressing chairs. Patrick, 31, steals alcohol and sells it to local shops at half price. These individuals steal to resell, funding drug and alcohol dependencies, not to feed themselves or their families.
While national data on shoplifting motivations is lacking, Kenway notes that stealing to resell is a common income strategy among homeless populations, frequently documented in academic research on the street economy. She argues that society tends to divide thieves into “justified” and “wrong’uns,” a fallacy known as the victim-offender binary. In reality, those who commit crimes are often victims themselves.
Root Causes: Trauma and Exclusion
All the prolific thieves Kenway met endured violent childhoods, parental substance abuse, and instability. Many grew up in care or sofa-surfed, experiencing sexual and physical abuse and lacking formal education. Their exclusion from conventional work stems from undereducation, trauma, and self-medication with drugs and alcohol. While not everyone with such backgrounds becomes a thief, these factors dramatically increase the likelihood of offending. Care leavers are ten times more likely to end up in prison.
Kenway stresses that acknowledging these causes is not making excuses but being honest about the circumstances that push people toward crime without adequate support. The chances of these individuals leading law-abiding lives were low from the start.
Government Response and Its Limitations
The UK government attributes the shoplifting spike to a perceived sense of impunity and plans to repeal a law that allegedly grants immunity for thefts under £200. Under new measures in the crime and policing bill, all retail thefts will be charged as “general theft,” carrying a maximum seven-year sentence. However, Kenway argues this approach is unlikely to succeed. Criminological research shows that while increasing perceived costs—like jail time—can deter some thieves, many believe they can outsmart security, are willing to accept prison, or are undeterred due to addiction.
Effective crime prevention requires understanding root causes. Addressing only poverty is insufficient, as many shoplifters steal for reasons beyond financial need. Progressive voices often shy away from this reality, fearing it bolsters punitive law-and-order agendas. But Kenway contends that confronting the complex lives of career shoplifters can foster both sympathy and effective solutions that finally include people like Ryan.
*Names have been changed.
Emily Kenway is a social policy doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh and author of Who Cares: the Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It.
