Stealing?

November 16th, 2024| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

America has a shoplifting epidemic.

Stores lose more than $13 billion worth of goods in shoplifting in the United States each year.
The 2022 Retail Security Survey found that 8 out of 10 retailers self-reported increased incidents of “violence and aggression” across 2022. In total, thirty-two states have passed legislation addressing organized retail crime. Close to half of retailers say that their loss prevention budgets were increased in 2022.

One might think organized crime is at fault for all of these. But one would be wrong, said Business Insider:

As much as retailers are quick to point the finger at organized operators for their theft problems, there’s another group that gets a lot less lip service: the opportunists who are pocketing things from time to time because they feel like it. These shoplifters have existed forever — adults with decent jobs who are firmly in the middle class. And they’re everywhere.”

Joshua Jacobson, a loss-prevention professional in California who’s worked for half a dozen major retailers over the past decade, explained:

It’s your normal, everyday person, doesn’t matter sex, gender, age, whatever, it’s just people that see an opportunity and go, ‘Huh, I bet I could steal that and nobody would know.’ They’re like a giant organized mob, they just don’t know each other.”

The National Association of Shoplifting Prevention estimates that one in 11 people has shoplifted during his or her lifetime and that men are as likely to shoplift as women.

Said one of these perpetrators, interviewed by the magazine:

It’s really impulsive. I’m just shopping with my own bags and slipping small, valuable things. Salmon lox fits nicely into a laptop sleeve. I save about $1,000 shoplifiting each year.”

And, no, he doesn’t feel bad about it, especially when he pilfers from Whole Foods. It became an open field at the high-end grocer after Amazon acquired it in 2017, the guy said, in large part because of Jeff Bezos.

It’s run by a guy who’s shooting himself into outer space. It just became so hard to find the reason that you actually hurt anybody by doing this.”

You shall not steal.
Exodus 20:15

This is a prohibition of stealing of any kind, under any circumstance. And such uprightness should characterize people who want to be in a filial relationship with God.

On the other hand, many of these stealers have concocted a code of conduct that amounted to pilfering only from big, evil retailers. And they do it with a very clean conscience!

One 2008 study found that shoplifting was more common among individuals with at least some college education and individual incomes over $35,000.

Do not trust in oppression,
and in robbery do not be vainly confident;
if wealth increases, do not set heart [on it].
Psalm 62:10

Ernesto Lopez, a senior research specialist at the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice:

There’s not much difference among income groups when people are asked whether they’ve ever shoplifted, because, again, ‘ever’ is a pretty long time. But what we do know is that about 80% of shoplifting incidents only involve one person and that the average value of shoplifted goods has been increasing.”

The interviewer of Business Insider checked with a now-reformed shoplifter who used stolen items from Home Depot, including tape-measures:

That’s the kind of thing you can help yourself to. That’s not even stealing. That’s just allowed. I don’t even feel bad about not feeling bad.”

But here’s Jesus:

“Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed;
for not even when one has an abundance
does his life consist of his possessions.”
Luke 12:15

SOURCE: Business Insider