Something has to change

It was another chastening experience to attend the SGF Crime Seminar last month. For almost a quarter of a century we’ve been reporting on the local retailing sector in Scotland and while pretty much everything has changed beyond recognition in the intervening years, one thing certainly hasn’t budged an inch: retail crime.

The seminar kicked off with some frankly brutal CCTV footage of incidents that had the audience gasping in horror. Mindless violence committed against staff who were doing nothing more than turning up at their work. It would be bad enough if these were isolated, rare incidents – but we all know they’re not. Horror shows like this occur on a daily basis in Scottish stores. Retailers have been murdered in their stores.

It’s hard to imagine that, if this happened in any other industry, there would be anything but public uproar and a rapid response from everyone from Humza Yousaf down. The recent Horizon episode elicited instant responses from MPs and MSPs, including the Prime Minister and the First Minister, with mountains moved in record time to deliver justice.

So why does it seem to be that no-one cares about retail crime? It has apparently long been accepted that, if you work in a shop, you’ll just have to put up with abuse and violence. Retail crime was long touted as “the victimless crime,” although that defence seems to have lost favour in recent years, thankfully.

But with a 400%+ increase in shoplifting in the last year, according to ACS figures, and abuse and violence literally daily occurrences, why does society seem to be able to effectively turn a blind eye? It’s hard to get your head around.

Assistant Chief Superintendent Tim Mairs did make a very valid point at the seminar: “We can’t arrest our way out of this”. The issue is a societal one. There’s something wrong with our society where we seem to think it’s ok to abuse and assault people simply doing their job. Fixing that requires more than arresting the culprits. It requires root and branch education and I, for one, am all for the suggestion that Daniel Johnson MSP proposed at the seminar calling on the Scottish Government to fund and produce a media campaign to tell people this isn’t ok. It isn’t acceptable to treat store staff this way. It might take a long time to have an impact on behaviours, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Shall we start a campaign?

Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR