I’ve never been much of a thief. Not because of my morals, more because of my cowardice. Nicking takes balls and mine are too small. During my adolescence, there was a big craze in my milieu for shoplifting. Mostly, it would be sweeties or dirty mags from the local corner shop. Sometimes we would go on ambitious outings on the tube into Central London, thieving from high-end outlets like Hamleys or Harrods. I would always be on the sidelines, shitting myself, watching as the braver kids tried (and usually failed) to avoid the attention of intimidating security staff.
One time, in a Covent Garden toy shop, I slipped a bouncy ball with a gargoyle’s face on it into my jacket pocket. The security guard apprehended me and threatened to call the cops. When my eyes welled with tears he decided to let me off. He knew as well as I did that I wasn’t cut out for that sort of life. Later, when I got home, I cried while confessing everything to my mum. She consoled me, telling me that everyone has a nicking phase, even her. Then she told me about her adolescent shoplifting career. It sounded so much more accomplished and daring than mine.
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A few days later, I stole a box of beef-flavoured stock cubes from the convenience store at the end of our road. It was a strange item to target, yes, but I had worked out that the stock cube section of the shop represented the security camera’s sole blind spot. I got away with that. My mum found the stock cubes in my pocket a few days later, responding more with concern than suspicion.
Nowadays, shoplifting has gone fully mainstream. I read in the paper last week that several of my local high streets are rife with it. Anecdotes abound among my friends of people breezing into Tesco and helping themselves to items without shame. And it’s not just kids either: adults on their way home from work who need a pint of milk and half a dozen eggs but don’t much fancy paying for them.
I make no judgements of the modern shoplifter. The cost of living crisis has dragged on for years and everyone is feeling the pinch. People need to feed themselves and their kids. If anyone is to blame for the outbreak of shoplifting, it’s the shops themselves. Supermarkets are increasingly reliant on irritating and unreliable self-checkout machines. This means there are fewer human beings to deter thieves. The big shops have chosen to replace humans with machines because it’s cheaper. But have they passed on these savings to the customer? They have not.
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