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Comment by MetaWhirledPeas | Hacker News Reader

At first glance this seems like an indicator of the country's overall moral health. But when I went to look up crime statistics I was told property crime has been declining since the 90s. What gives? Is this an example of misleading statistics, or is there something else?

One hypothesis could be that a reduction in employee/customer engagement within stores creates more opportunities for theft. More self-checkout lines, fewer department representatives roaming around. Maybe?

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This is what happens when you have an economy driven by finance, with corporate overlords who see their 2 million employees as numbers in a spreadsheet that can be moved around to squeeze out as much "shareholder value" as possible.

I don’t know man, when I used to work a Walmart deli we would throw out roughly 400 lbs of meat and cheese a day from expiring and were too lazy to mark it as shrink as we were told to.

As far as the store was concerned that was indistinguishable from theft and the managers/supervisors never gave a shit either. Then you’ve got CEOs of retail organizations admitting they they overstated how much theft had increased[1]

I’m pretty sure it’s just C levels lying to justify the changes for other reasons and then pinning it on the brokies as a convienent scapegoat

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

To be fair, the crime in the 90's is different than the crime today.

In the 90's, there was absolutely more crime than today. No question about that. However, how many Target or Walmart mass shooters were there in 1990? How many hotel shooters mowed down 260 people in the 90's?

Just pointing out that there has been a slow change in the nature of threats in society over time. At the same time, I'm not sure our laws, or even our law enforcement infrastructure, has changed to interdict that kind of crime/(terrorism?).

Now here's the thing however, the answer is not to invade everyone's privacy and make every conversation or action you take available on social media or whatever. I think the answer is to really dig into why interdiction is not happening for some of these new forms of crime. Sure cameras help police and Walmart uppity ups when the inevitable happens, but I think we can be a little more creative and maybe even get better results?

What we learned by reducing crime in the 90's is that interdiction is always better than crime scene investigation. That's not any less true for the type of crime we're seeing today. In fact, it's more true. You definitely want to interdict mass shootings.

This is about monitoring the employees, not the customers.

When you press, you quickly find out that corporate has zero idea as to what is causing their shrink. They've been pissing and moaning about consumer theft, but the scale seems too large for it to be that.

Of course, the people at the bottom have a pretty solid grasp on what is causing the shrink--and it's all rooted in the fact that they're being paid like shit.

It can be true that crime can be decreasing and that retail thefts can be up.

Crimee trends can change as opportunity shifts.

This seems to be fueled by perceived changes in the legal risk of smash and grabs.

You don't give body cams to counter retail theft. There are better surveillance systems for that. The body cams are for safety vis-a-vis personal offenses not really property offenses.

I understand why the cameras are there, and I still believe it takes society in an ominous direction. Soon, everything you do will be uploaded and processed because everyone is recording every interaction. With "smart* eye glasses, with body cams, with phones and watches, and so on.

Maybe ubiquitous gaze is the only way to be safe, or to ensure you capture violent offenders? But I think we should all take a moment to think about the consequences of establishing ubiquitous gaze long term.

Increased retail theft increases the risk of employee confrontation or employee directed violence.

Increased risk is not the same as increased occurrences (but it wouldn't be surprising for them to both increase.)

Liability wise you still want to respond to the risk.

I think that crime is a fear tactic to sell these and to make excuses for worse customer service. Why hire more employees if you can just put cameras on everyone?

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