The charity Retail Trust and global retail crime intelligence platform Auror have launched a new partnership urging retailers to work together to uncover the severity of violent and organised retail crime and improve the safety of workers through easier and consistent reporting methods.
The partnership will call on retailers to explore crime-reporting technology that helps staff record abuse and theft quickly and securely, and enables retailers to identify repeat offenders across stores, to support the Crime and Policing Act’s crackdown on retail attacks and theft.
The new Act is making assaulting a shop worker a standalone offence, ending the £200 threshold for prosecuting shoplifting and introducing Respect Orders to ban repeat offenders from public spaces, but there are fears many offences could still go unreported.
One in four (24%) workers have told the Retail Trust they don’t report incidents to their managers or the police, even as 77% of retail workers faced physical or verbal assaults last year, according to research carried out for the Retail Trust’s Let’s Respect Retail campaign.
New data from UK retailers using Auror also shows one in 10 retail crime events are violent or involve a weapon, and the top 10% of offenders are responsible for 68% of retail crime.
The new partnership forms part of wider efforts by the Retail Trust and Auror to protect workers, shed light on escalating levels of crime and abuse and hold offenders to account by sharing the right information at the right time with law enforcement.
Auror’s platform is used by the world’s largest retailers, and some of the UK’s biggest retail employers, to record crime in their stores after it happens in a secure and structured way, which helps them connect crimes to repeat and organised offenders which were previously seen as isolated events. That information is then used to collaborate with police forces across the country.
Diligent retailer reporting and collaboration through Auror recently helped police dismantle an organised crime ring linked to £600,000, and in another case, a violent offender was arrested in connection to £270,000 in stolen goods across 80 events from one retailer alone.
The Retail Trust also joined forces with Merseyside Police earlier this year to help shop staff in Liverpool de-escalate and recover from verbal and physical attacks, and the charity has been rolling out further wellbeing support to thousands more people across the country.
Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the Retail Trust, said: “The Crime and Policing Act could make a real difference to the millions of people serving their communities every day who tell us they are intimidated, threatened, shouted at and assaulted when they are just trying to do their jobs.
“But the new measures will only work if shop staff feel confident enough to report what is happening to them. One in four retail workers have told the Retail Trust they do not report abuse and crime to their manager or the police, often because they have been put off by a previously unhelpful response.
“We’re working with hundreds of retailers, police forces and other partners across the country to make it easier for staff to report incidents and get the right support to feel safer at work. Many more must now get behind our combined efforts and our charity’s Let’s Respect Retail movement to provide this help for retail workers and ensure that abuse and crime are never accepted as just part of the job.
“Abuse and crime have been having a devastating impact on shop workers’ lives and damaging their confidence, wellbeing and sense of safety long after their shifts have finished. They now need to see that when incidents happen, they will be taken seriously, supported afterwards, and not left to deal with the consequences on their own.”
Mark Gleeson, Auror VP United Kingdom and Europe, said: “This partnership will help us continue to highlight the high volume and serious nature of retail crime, the immeasurable impact it has on the three million retail workers across the UK every day, and how we can address this problem together through stronger collaboration and technology.
“UK retailers are leading the way in providing their store teams with crime reporting tools like Auror that allow for structured reporting to connect the dots on the highest harm offenders. Police do an incredible job and we should all want them to be as efficient and effective as possible. Retailers using Auror to share information with police to help focus their precious resources is critical if we are to deal with this high volume, high violence crime.”
“Retail crime is not victimless - it is not shoplifting, it’s violence, abuse and intimidation, and it can seriously tear away at the vibrancy of our high streets. One in 10 events involve a frontline colleague being assaulted, abused or threatened with a weapon. That’s why we’re on a mission alongside our partners like Retail Trust, to reduce violent retail crime by 50 per cent in five years.”
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