Fear in the Aisles: Why Retail Crime needs to be tackled by the next Scottish Government

Abuse and far too often violence. Sexist, homophobic, or racist abuse. Criminal damage. Hundreds of millions of stolen goods. The brutal reality of the impact of crime on Scotland’s retail industry.

The statistics tell a terrible tale.  According to trade union USDAW 70 per cent of shopworkers have been abused at work, 45 per cent threatened, and 8 per cent assaulted. The official figures are similarly stark. The Scottish Government’s Recorded Crime in Scotland 2024-25 data found there were 2,870 common assaults of a retail worker. 406 of those are with injury. However, it’s almost certain those appalling figures don’t represent the true scale of the problem. It’s likely many retailers no longer report abuse at work. Shop workers fear either the police won’t respond, or even if they do, and even if the perpetrator makes it through the tortuous criminal justice system, the consequences aren’t enough to deter. Even if the Recorded Crime figures are accurate, that would still mean the very best case scenario is nearly eight shop workers a week are being assaulted and injured. 

The impact is enormous. Shop workers tell horror stories of being threatened with knives unless they hand over goods. Store owners and managers talk with despair at watching products being carried out the store, knowing if they try to stop the thief then their life might be at risk.

Theft often comes hand in hand with this, indeed is the precursor to abuse or worse. The most recent Recorded Crime in Scotland release found that between 2023-24 and 2024-25 shop theft increased by 16% from 38,674 to 44,730 crimes in the year to the end of September. That is a 57% increase over the 10 year period between 2015-16 and 2024-25, from 28,424 to 44,730 crimes. Or to put it another way shop theft is now at the highest level since 1971. This is an endemic problem which increases costs for shoppers whilst making the shopping experience worse.

This is a visible problem for shoppers as well. According to our Consumer Sentiment Monitor 17 per cent of consumers have seen shopworkers abused, and 19per cent of Scots have witnessed shop lifting. No one wants to visit a shop which is a crime scene or which is persistently affected by abuse, doubly hitting retailers for no fault of their own.

There are no good solutions for retailers, only trade-offs. Increased security measures such as locked cabinets, valuable items hidden behind tills, security barriers and so forth are expensive and make the customer experience worse, a real issue when physical retail is competing with online. Stores are more expensive to run when you need to invest in CCTV, body-worn cameras, security staff and extra workers to keep people safe. The consequence of this is the the total cost of crime is not far short of the hefty amount retailers pay in non-domestic rates.

Action is desperately needed. To their credit the Scottish Government has made a start. In last year’s Budget they allocated £3 million to Police Scotland, which has been used to create a Retail Crime Taskforce. That’s a good start. But the modest number of officers deployed under the scheme must feel like the Spartans at Thermopylae against the hordes of criminals.

But a good start must be maintained. So retailers will be hoping to see increased funding to tackle retail crime in this year’s Scottish Budget, due on 13 January. Just as importantly this needs to be part of a sustained multi-year effort to get on top of this scourge. Ultimately the target should be for every incident of abuse to be attended by the Police; an interim step could be committing this year for every violent incident to be attended. That requires resourcing, but it’s hardly unreasonable.

Of course there are still challenges even when someone is arrested and there is no dispute on the crime or evidence. The criminal justice system needs both investment and reform, no small challenge. Yet leaving it under-resourced means entering a Sisyphean cycle of the same criminals committing the same crimes with the same lack of consqeunce.

Those reforms would make a huge difference in tackling one of the two main groups responsible for retail crime.  The priority for the Police must be organised criminals. We know a significant portion of retail crime is done by gangs, often as an easy way of funding their more nefarious activities. These organisations use a variety of tactics, not least recruiting young people who are less likely to face prosecution and who can be discarded once the police are aware of them.

The second group are those with chaotic lives. People who are unable to manage themselves, or those with addictions. They too cause chaos and distress in stores – but in many cases the criminal justice system isn’t really the answer. Government needs to take broader action to help these people – not just to help retail – but as part of a wider strategy to help those who need support.

That leaves just one group. People who are broadly law-abiding but feel in the moment that shouting at a shop assistant or stealing a small item is somehow ok. To those people we need to exert social pressure. One step the SRC supports is the annual ShopKind campaign which promotes good behaviour in stores; reminding people that abuse or poor behaviour has consequences and isn’t acceptable. Another step would be dispensing with the term ‘shoplifting’, which downplays the seriousness of the crime and cumulative impact it is having on the industry, and calling it for what it is: theft. 

There are few easy, simple answers to tackling retail crime. Boosting the economy and helping people out of poverty needs to go hand in hand with retributive justice and social intervention. As the Scottish political parties pull together their policy agendas and manifestos for the next Holyrood election they must put ending the nightmare of retail crime at the top of their priorities.

Ewan MacDonald-Russell is Deputy Head of the Scottish Retail Consortium