The new breed of 'shoplifting entrepreneurs' fuelling the UK's petty crime problem

Behind the counter of his convenience store, surrounded by rows of crisps, sandwiches and spirits, Muhammed Rabani glances at a bank of CCTV screens, anticipating a shoplifter coming at any moment.

Muhammed has grown wearily used to the crime. "It's every day," he says. He estimates it is costing the family business in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, around £900 every month.

When asked if thieves ever get violent, he holds his hand up to show a cut covered by a plaster. The previous day, he confronted a shoplifter who tried to steal a full box of chocolates: "I told him to stop... and he hit me."

Shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales were up 13% in the year to June 2025, with 529,994 instances recorded according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS said there have been "sharp rises" in shop theft since the coronavirus pandemic.

It's a similar story in Scotland. The Scottish Government's police recorded crime statistics for the year ending September 2025 showed a 15% increase, from 42,271 to 48,564 shoplifting offences.

Northern Ireland saw a 3.9% reduction in police recorded shoplifting offences in the year to November 2025, but shoplifting offences there have risen sharply since Covid, too.

Cleveland - which covers Stockton-on-Tees as well as areas such as Middlesbrough and Redcar - appears to be England and Wales's shoplifting capital. Figures show its police force recorded the highest number of shop theft offences - with 13.6 offences per 1,000 population.

And with the festive shopping season in full swing, retailers are braced for a shoplifting surge.

"We always see a spike in the run-up to Christmas - there's a huge demand for stolen goods," says criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor from City St George's, University of London.

Experts say that the nature of shoplifting itself is changing, with a greater range of offenders targeting a more diverse range of goods. So who are the modern day shoplifters and what can be done to tackle them?

'There appears to be no consequence'

The statistics around shoplifting are notoriously tricky to analyse because retail experts and shops alike agree they don't reflect the true scale of the crime.

A study this year by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) "put it at 20 million incidents [annually], which would suggest that fewer than 3% of shop thefts are even reported," Prof Taylor points out.

According to the ONS, the latest statistics show the increases in shoplifting appear to be slowing down. But for shops in Stockton, it doesn't feel that way.

Retail experts have also highlighted that after shoplifters have been reported to the police, shopkeepers often feel no action is taken.

And there is evidence to back this up. Almost 290,000 shoplifting investigations out of around 520,000 were closed with no suspect identified in 2024-25, according to House of Commons Library research revealed by the Liberal Democrats.

Meanwhile, figures obtained by the BBC show the average time it takes for a shoplifting case to be dealt with from offence to completion in a magistrates' court in England and Wales has risen from 32 days in 2014 to 59 days in 2024.

Prof Taylor says these figures reveal the "crux" of the problem: "There appears to be no consequence if you steal and if you're violent, and if you're a prolific offender it takes a long time for any action to actually be taken."

Former Det Ch Insp David Spencer, who now works for the right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange, says the consequences of shoplifting are felt much more widely: "This type of crime has the potential to completely knock out the economic viability of small towns," he says.

How shops are fighting back

Many of those working in the retail sector point to the fact that shoplifting has evolved in recent years - with different categories of shoplifters emerging.

One of the biggest developments, experts and retail staff agree, has been the rise of organised criminal gangs.

"We get groups of three or four that come in and use distraction techniques," says the a supermarket worker from Teesside who contacted Your Voice, Your BBC News. The worker described it as "really bad", adding "it's got worse".

In 2024, the National Business Crime Solution (NBCS) - an organisation which works with 100 businesses to tackle retail crime - said it was tracking 63 organised criminal groups across the UK who have stolen at least £2.4m of goods in five years. Of these, it told us, 26 groups originate from the UK and Ireland and the rest predominantly from Eastern European countries.

Lucy Whing, a crime policy adviser for retail trade body, the BRC, says this is a huge concern for its members: "You hear of these gangs systemically hitting stores one after another all over the country."

This trend appears to have become an issue in more affluent areas of Cleveland, like Yarm, a pretty market town a short drive from Stockton.

When I visit, the high street is full Christmas shoppers enjoying its pubs, restaurants and independent shops.

Abigail Donaldson, who owns high-end streetwear shop, Triad, believes the relatively expensive items she sells has made her shop a target for organised criminals travelling from out of town to steal.

"We don't get as many young kids coming and stealing here, it's all middle-aged men that know what they're doing," she says. "They are very prepared" - in that they know what they want and are organised.

David Spencer believes organised criminals have moved into the shoplifting market because it is highly lucrative. "They can literally take huge amounts of stock out pretty quickly."

New breed of 'shoplifting entrepreneurs'

In an age where online resale sites have allowed so many people to dabble in entrepreneurialism, it's perhaps little surprise that among them are also a new breed of what Prof Taylor calls "shoplifting entrepreneurs".

She says: "They might not have really dabbled in criminality before but for some reason, they've latched on to a particular product that they know is easy to steal, it's high value and they can resell it quickly," she said.

One popular item which shops have said is regularly stolen to sell online is the collectable soft toys Jellycats. Other items high on the shoplifters' wish-list for resale include perfume and designer clothes.

Ruth Lund, manager of Cherry Hill Garden Centre in nearby Middlesbrough, says this type of shoplifter has become a problem for her business, which has just installed new anti-shoplifting barriers to tackle the problem.

She said they know "exactly what they're going for" - including garden furniture and Christmas decorations. Perhaps more surprisingly, bags of gravel and even cans of soft drinks are also targets - and "they will be out the door before we're even aware that they're in the shop".

Shoplifting-to-order is also being used to sell on stolen goods by what a 2018 report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank identified as a traditional shoplifter - somebody funding a Class-A drug addiction. Even before the rise in shoplifting since the pandemic, the CSJ said 70% of shoplifting incidents were committed by these people.

One reformed shoplifter, Keeley Knowles from Telford, Shropshire, says she only stole from shops to feed her habit - focusing on shops in Birmingham's Bullring.

"I went straight for designer handbags, designer belts, sunglasses, you know, the stupidly priced stuff," says Keeley, who has now been clean for two years and carries out outreach work with drug users. "And obviously, my income went up and up and with it, my habit went up and up."

In Stockton, shop workers pointed to drug and alcohol addiction as fuelling the crime and one street is mentioned above all as the epicentre of the problem - Hartington Road, a row of large terraced houses, many divided up into flats, where lots of people with addiction problems congregate.

A nearby shop manager told us when people come into their store under the effects of drugs "they don't know what they're doing" and just grab things and walk out.

"It's very scary, because you don't know if they have needles or what else they may carry," he added.

Cleveland Police says its charge and detection rate is above the national average and that it takes a "proactive" approach to combating shoplifting.

Ch Insp Jamie Bell, the force's operational lead on retail crime, said: "While there is still work to do in tackling retail crime, our officers work tirelessly to address the issue and, despite the high volume of offences, continue to deliver strong results."

'[I] didn't think anything would be done'

One of the big issues with tackling shoplifting is there is no quick-fix solution and a wide range of opinions on how to combat the problem.

A 2024 report by the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee made 15 recommendations on how to combat the issue - which included improving reporting systems, more regulations on the online resale market and more funding for rehabilitation.

Former shoplifter Keeley believes sending shoplifters with addictions to jail is a "waste of resources" as it does not treat the root cause of the offending.

She believes there needs to be more targeted recovery programmes for offenders. Prof Taylor says sentences of less than 12 months are "really ineffective and most people come out worse than they went in".

David Spencer feels that the police need to be responding more quickly and putting offenders through the criminal justice system.

He said that organised criminals who commit thousands of pounds worth of shoplifting should not be handed suspended or community sentences and instead should be sent to jail for "lengthy periods of time".

Steps have been taken to try and combat the issue and there are indications they are having some success.

In October 2023 police and government launched the Retail Crime Action Plan, which committed police to prioritise turning up urgently where violence has been used, where a repeat or prolific offender has been detained or where evidence needs to be promptly secured.

The same year, a group of major retailers agreed to pay around £600,000 to a police operation called Project Pegasus, which used CCTV and data shared by the shops and police to understand shoplifters' tactics.

The operation has seen offenders who were responsible for £8m of theft brought to justice in its first year, according to the National Police Chiefs Council.

Retailers have also stepped up their investment in measures such as CCTV and security guards with a record £1.8bn spent on crime prevention in the year to June 2024, according to the BRC. Lucy Whing of the trade body says it is "hearing anecdotally that for some some members, things are looking a bit better and perhaps this is off the back of these major investments".

The Home Office says shop theft "is completely unacceptable and is blighting our high streets". A spokesperson says it has announced a "Winter of Action" to crack down on crime and its Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will see 3,000 additional officers in neighbourhood roles by spring 2026.

Last year the government said it was bringing in a new crime bill to target people who steal goods worth less than £200. The policy would be a reversal of 2014 legislation that meant "low-value" thefts worth under £200 were subject to less serious punishment. The government has also pledged to bring in a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker. Both moves have been welcomed by the BRC.

Despite this, there is little confidence from some retailers that anything will change soon.

Back in Stockton, Muhammed says he didn't report the shoplifters assault against him because he "didn't think anything would be done".

For all the talk of action, he feels the crime is still not treated seriously. Confronting shoplifters, he says, is "just a part of working there".

Additional reporting by Florence Freeman

Top image credits: In Pictures/Getty Images

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