Setting expectations and thinning the herd. If even half of items had a well hidden air tag, and the cops successfully followed up even half of tagged thefts:

There would a. be less dumb criminals around to repeat offend and b. The smarter would-be criminals will do the calculus and and not steal items which could have tags.

Something like this product could potentially be a small theft deterrant.

You can tell there's an AirTag, and there's no easy way to remove it.

https://www.elevationlab.com/collections/airtag/products/tag...

I think "theft recovery" is probably meant.