By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN
New York — Coming out of the pandemic, many retail chains, political leaders, law enforcement officials and others told America there was an unprecedented level of shoplifting.
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Shoplifting became a political lighting rod, and videos of thieves smashing store windows and grabbing merchandise rocketed across the news and social media as a symbol of a breakdown across cities.
But national crime data never showed a retail theft wave, though shoplifting did spike in certain cities like New York.
William Blair retail analysts in 2023 suggested that chains had “overexaggerated” the impact, using it as an excuse for inventory mismanagement and strategic mistakes. Walgreens’ then-chief financial officer even said “maybe we cried too much” about lost merchandise and overspent on security measures.
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Retailers and officials are painting a much different picture today: They say their anti-theft strategies and public policy changes are making an impact, and data shows shoplifting rates are falling around the country.
There are several reasons for the shift in messaging and improved trends. For one, retailers’ tools for tracking products became more accurate in recent years. Cities and states devoted extra resources to breaking up organized theft rings. Lawmakers and voters approved stiffer criminal penalties for smaller levels of theft and larger organized crime. And companies adapted by investing in internal security—including removing self-checkout stations and locking up products to the point it turned off customers.
It’s a major shift from the messaging just two years ago.
Muddy data
A Target shopping cart remains in a vacant parking lot in October 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
From 2021 to 2023, chains rallied public attention to soaring levels of theft and groups bursting into stores and grabbing shelves full of merchandise. Retailers closed in major cities, hired extra security, locked up products behind glass cases and posted millions of dollars in losses.
Target CEO Brian Cornell said in 2023 that the chain was up against “an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime.” More than 95% of shoplifting incidents involve one or two people. But sporadic violent incidents of organized retail theft — larger groups stealing merchandise with the intent to resell it— rattled the industry and made headlines.
Headline-making incidents aside, the imperfect data available didn’t necessarily back up a widespread trend.
Overall, shoplifting incidents were 16% higher in the first half of 2023 than the first half of 2019, according to an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan criminal justice policy organization. However, out of 24 cities the organization analyzed, 17 reported decreases in shoplifting in that period.
But the Council on Criminal Justice warns that shoplifting incidents often go unreported, so the statistics “almost certainly undercount total shoplifting by a significant amount.”
That said, data from this year show improvements. Shoplifting reports fell 12% on average during the first half of 2025 from the same period last year, according to the organization.
In New York City, retail theft fell 12% annually and 5% across the rest of the state, Governor Kathy Hochul announced last week. The drop came after New York poured $40 million into law enforcement task forces devoted to investigating retail crime and passed legislation allowing prosecutors to make it easier to file felony charges for stealing products from multiple stores.
“The numbers are excellent. This is a really good trend. I think you’re going to see it continue,” said Christopher Herrmann, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Falling shrink
A loss prevention security guard to prevent theft is seen at the Target discount department store in Miami Beach, Florida, on October 31, 2023.
Part of the muddiness in the data is because of flaws in the measurements retailers use to calculate shoplifting and lost merchandise — but stores say this is improving quickly thanks to updated processes and partnerships.
It’s impossible for retailers to know the exact cause of every item they lose. But their best estimate for items that go missing is a metric called shrink rate: the tally of lost inventory as a percentage of sales. The bulk of shrink is external theft and employee theft, but it also includes damaged and spoiled products, administrative errors, vendor fraud and other factors.
Retailers have cautioned that shrink is an imperfect metric that does not fully capture theft or organized crime, as well as the impact of violence against workers, physical damage to stores and customer and employee perceptions of store safety.
Still, many retailers have said recently that their shrink rates are getting better, driven by their strategies to prevent shoplifting and work with law enforcement.
“A couple of years ago we encountered a higher level of shrink in the business. We navigated that really well,” Walmart finance chief John David Rainey said on a recent earnings call. Target said last month that its shrink rate this year will be below pre-pandemic levels.
Home Depot, too, has “seen measurable improvements in shrink,” particularly in areas where the company has made targeted investments and coordinated closely with local prosecutors and law enforcement, the company’s vice president of asset protection Scott Glenn said in a statement to CNN. “The external factors are not necessarily improving, but our efforts and are partnerships are working.”
Shrink rates are also improving because retailers’ accounting of their merchandise has improved. Companies calculate their shrink rate based on a physical count of their inventory on hand, which most take once or twice a year, according to the National Retail Federation, a top lobbying group for the industry.
The pandemic also proved to be a confounding factor during that 2021 to 2023 period. Shrink dipped in 2020 as stores closed during the pandemic and customers shopped online — and then, as stores began reopening, retailers underestimated their shrink rate.
When stores took physical inventories in 2022, they were missing more products than they expected, so they increased their shrink estimate and took a steeper hit to profit.
Now, they say their shrink rates are falling from those levels.
Harsher policies
Governor Kathy Hochul holds a press conference in Harlem to speak with local business leaders to highlight the state’s progress in combatting organized retail theft on August 26, in New York City.
Measurement nuances are not the only change, however. Public policies, closer retailer collaboration with law enforcement to thwart theft, and other investments have also made a difference in the industry’s fight.
Over the last four years, states have passed more than 80 laws focused on preventing organized retail crime, according to the trade group International Council of Shopping Centers. These laws have had the backing of the retail industry and many law enforcement groups.
At first, the industry and law enforcement officials focused on organized networks reselling stolen goods on online marketplaces such as Amazon and Facebook. In 2022, Congress passed the Inform Consumers Act requiring online marketplaces to collect and verify information about third-party sellers.
They also pushed to lower thresholds for prosecutors to charge people with felony thefts and require stiffer sentences for repeat offenders. Tougher criminal policies may not deter crime, however. Laws and policies designed to deter crime by focusing mainly on increasing the severity of punishments are ineffective, according to the Department of Justice. “Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.”
Jurisdictions have increased funding and personnel for law enforcement to investigate organized retail crime cases.
“We have seen states and communities step up against organized retail crime,” said David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations for the National Retail Federation. “There has been progress made at local, state and federal level.”
Home Depot’s Scott Glenn said that the company’s close coordination with law enforcement is helping lead to larger cases against organized groups, including 14 people arrested last month allegedly linked to 600 thefts at 71 different stores in Southern California. Home Depot said it was the largest retail theft case in its history.
The industry wants more to be done on organized retail crime and has promoted a bipartisan federal bill, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, to create a national task force to focus on complex criminal enterprises that cross state lines.
“It’s an essential piece of the puzzle,” Glenn said.
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