ATLANTA — As the holiday shopping season intensifies, businesses in major cities continue to grapple with a rise in theft, and experts are working to better track the data.
One such business is Refresh Atlanta, a store in East Point that specializes in rare sneakers and apparel. Co-owner Richard Brown said the store is still recovering after a break-in last year that resulted in significant losses. Thieves took everything in sight, forcing the store to shut down for seven months. In response, Brown made a $15,000 investment in security systems, emphasizing that the experience was a setback but not a permanent roadblock.
“It hurt,” Brown said. “We had to readjust, pivot. Didn’t know if we were going to keep going.”
The burglary at Refresh Atlanta is just one example. Videos showing brazen thieves making off with stolen goods in metro Atlanta constantly circulate on social media. Yet, the scope of the problem is hard to quantify. 11Alive learned law enforcement data does not always distinguish between retail theft and other types of larceny.
But experts are able to zone in on some patterns. In Atlanta, police reported a 14% increase in shoplifting incidents this year compared to last. In contrast, a mid-year report from the Council on Criminal Justice, which analyzed law enforcement data from 23 cities, also found a 24% increase in shoplifting during the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year.
The report notes the year isn’t over yet: “Over the past several years, shoplifting rates were higher in November and December than they were during earlier months of the year, coinciding with increased in-person retail activity. Because shoplifting rates in a 23-city sample for the first half of 2024 are higher than in 2023, it is likely that the reported shoplifting rate for the full year will rise from 2023 to 2024.”
The numbers are likely an undercount, the report notes, given that the data is based on incidents reported and doesn’t reflect the total that occurred. Ernesto Lopez, a researcher with the Council on Criminal Justice, suggests that heightened attention to shoplifting may also explain an uptick.
"As these stores have implemented these technologies, hired more personnel, they could just be capturing it more,” Lopez shared. “It's also difficult to get a sense if it is that change in reporting because unlike some other offenses, such as assaults or robberies, that have victimization surveys that we can compare to, we don't really have that for shoplifting. So that that's another challenge.”
Lopez said a good sense of the data is needed to inform better policy. The FBI, he explained, pulls statistics from two different sources, making it challenging to understand the full scope of the shoplifting problem and the reason for upticks. Earlier this year, the Council on Criminal Justice released its working group’s recommendations aimed at improving crime data infrastructure, not just for retail theft but also for more serious crimes such as non-fatal shootings.
Meanwhile, for business owners like Brown, the impact of theft goes beyond just security measures—it affects the bottom line. He said such incidents could potentially lead to higher prices for consumers as retailers try to recoup their losses.
"We might have to raise prices on some things or sell them faster to meet our deadlines," Brown said. “It can help the customer too because some things we might have to sell a little faster and take a loss on stuff on because, you know, we have to meet our deadlines as well.”
At Emory University's Goizueta Business School, marketing professor Douglas Bowman noted that retailers face a delicate balance. While security measures are necessary, businesses do not want their customers or employees to feel uncomfortable or intimidated by heightened security.
“The challenge for retailers is to ensure that security doesn’t create a tense atmosphere in their stores,” Bowman said. “No one wants their customers feeling nervous while shopping.”
With the holiday shopping season in full swing, Brown reminds people of the impact on the community as a whole. He hopes would-be thieves reconsider their actions.
“If you put the same energy into something positive, you’ll go further,” he said. “Think about it before you make that bad decision.”
