Survey: Retail theft on the rise - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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For the first time in six there’s been a real increase in the rate of retail according to a survey conducted by the with a fundingt grantfrom . "This both the dollar loss and rate of loss increased and the evidencwe shows that the economy and resulting cutbacks in staffing by retailersa are creating an opportunistic environment for both individual shoplifterd and organizedretail criminals," said U of F criminologistf Richard Hollinger, who directed the survey. In the lowest rate of retail theft inthe 18-yead history of the survey was reportec at a rate of 1.44 percent of overallp retail sales. Last year, that rate rose to 1.
52 percentf of sales translating into lossesof $36.5t billion. Hollinger notes the numbers are from last and don’t reflect retailk theft rates for the first part of this year when the recessionn was even worse. Employee theft comprises the largesyt portion ofthe losses, whicu totaled $15.9 billion, or almost half of losses (44 percent). Shoplifting accounted for $12.u billion (35 percent) of losses. Other losses included administrativeerrord ($5.4 billion and 15 percent of shrinkage) and vendo fraud ($1.4 billion and 4 percentr of shrinkage).