Supermarket staff in London are now serving customers from inside glass and metal cages. The unveiling of such desperate security measures, including at a Sainsbury’s store in Battersea, should shock us. Yet in Britain, we’ve become so accustomed to shoplifting and crime on our streets that its introduction generates barely a murmur.
Our supermarkets and shops have morphed from places where customers can be trusted, to environments where they are watched like hawks and treated with suspicion
Sainsbury’s says the crackdown has been implemented to ‘protect’ staff serving vape bars, tobacco and alcohol to customers. It’s hard to blame the supermarket for its logic. But that doesn’t mean we should be blind to what profoundly depressing places our shops, and high streets, have become.
Slabs of plastic and glass that separate customers from shop owners and workers have become the norm. Cameras watch customers’ every move, including at self-service checkouts where VAR-style devices inform potential shoplifters that their misdeeds have been spotted.
It’s not unusual to see staff wearing cameras strapped to their chests, recording their interactions with shoppers – and shoplifters – for their own protection. Walk down the booze aisle in your local shop, and you’ll find bottles of wine and spirits wrapped in nets and tagged to the hilt.
Elsewhere, high-value items such as razor blades or toothbrush heads are encased in plastic boxes. It isn’t only expensive goods that are kept protected; in some Greggs’s stores in London, customers can’t even be trusted to pay for cans of fizzy drinks and sandwiches, so these are now stored behind the till.
Such security measures pose an inconvenience for the ordinary shopper, who now has to ask for help – rather than simply use a self-checkout till. It shows, too, how our supermarkets and shops have morphed from places where customers can be trusted, to environments where they are watched like hawks and treated with suspicion from the moment they enter.
It’s hard, of course, to blame supermarkets for resorting to these extreme measures. Police in Britain logged 516,971 incidents of shoplifting last year – up from 429,873 in 2023. Videos circulate on the internet every day showing shoplifters stuffing their bags and walking out; other clips show security workers fighting with thieves.
Our high streets are a sad reflection of Britain’s decline, and the lawlessness that is plain to see all around us. Yet this doesn’t mean that we should accept unthinkingly the security measures that shops are putting in place. British society once functioned without them. Only a few years ago, shoplifting was not much of a problem. So why must the public accept such intrusive measures that appear to only put a plaster over the real issues?
In February, WHSmith stuck security tags on bags of mini eggs in a bid to deter thieves. The move followed in the footsteps of Tesco, which began putting tags and nets on boxes of Quality Street and Celebrations – despite them costing just £3 and £3.75 respectively.
Such extreme measures are less surprising when you consider the results of a poll from earlier this year that saw more than a third of 1,000 British shoppers admit to failing to scan at least one item on self-checkouts. A third also admitted to not weighing loose items correctly, while 38 per cent said they had deployed the ‘banana trick’ to pass off an expensive item as a cheaper one, like weighing electronics as fruit to fool the machine.
I remember, when I was about 14, being accused of shoplifting at a well-known retail store. My crime, in reality, was attempting to smuggle a chocolate bar into the shop when confronted with a sign that said ‘no eating inside’. The cashier threatened to call the police.
It’s not a nice feeling being accused of something you haven’t done. But in hindsight I can see why any hint of a suspicious expression might have served as a red flag to shop workers who, in this case ten years ago, actually took action (albeit wrongly). There are a surprising number of people that think stealing from supermarkets is not a moral issue, least of all when there are few repercussions.
A paradox now exists where supermarket bosses will add layer upon layer of security measures while shop staff, for whatever reason, remain seemingly indifferent to preventing crime.
This contradiction was epitomised last October in the case of a young man who was recorded climbing through the ceiling in order to evade the glass casing at a Tesco counter selling vape, cigarettes and alcohol – as security guards appeared to just stand and watch.
Of course, we shouldn’t tar every security guard with the same brush. There are many who work hard – and those who feature in the videos we see on X and Facebook show that many are doing their jobs bravely in difficult circumstances. But how have we got to a position where customers are being watched more than at any point in history, while more and more people are getting away with theft as security staff watch on?
We need to do something about shop crime. But the endless stream of security measures does not appear to be working.
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