WITH BLACK FRIDAY signaling that the holiday shopping season is in full swing, a new report says shoplifting rates in Boston are up compared to levels before the pandemic, though the city has avoided the spike in retail theft that several major US cities have experienced. 

Shoplifting was up 12 percent in Boston when comparing the first six months of 2019 to the first six months of this year, according to the analysis conducted by the Council on Criminal Justice, a Washington-based think tank and research organization.

The report looked at shoplifting trends in 24 US cities and found huge swings, both up and down, over that time period. In New York City, shoplifting has soared 64 percent and in Los Angeles it is up 61 percent since 2019. Meanwhile, rates have fallen 65 percent in St. Paul, Minnesota and an astounding 78 percent in St. Petersburg, Florida, according to the report. 

Boston was one of seven cities where the report said shoplifting is up compared to pre-pandemic rates, while 17 cities have seen decreases. Across all 24 cities, the shoplifting rate was up 16 percent, but when New York City is removed from the analysis, the rate actually fell by 7 percent. 

“The big picture post-pandemic is that there’s a lot more difference in trends in cities,” said Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice and co-author of the report.

Changes in shoplifting rates in 24 US cities from the first six months of 2019 to the first six months of 2023

Shoplifting rates across the 24 cities fell 37 percent during the height of the pandemic, from January to June, 2020, when many retail outlets were closed. The study sought to determine what has happened since then. 

“We’ve seen over the past couple of years activity start to creep up to pre-pandemic levels and then even exceed it,” said Ryan Kearney, general counsel for the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. 

The retailers group met over the summer with Segun Idowu, the city’s chief of economic opportunity and inclusion, and sat down earlier this month with Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden to share concerns about shoplifting. 

Hadyen said the areas with the biggest concentrations of shoplifting in Boston are Downtown Crossing and the South Bay shopping center, which he noted is not far from the troubled Mass. and Cass corridor, the epicenter of the city’s homelessness and opioid addiction problem. “I think there’s a correlation there,” Hayden said, adding that he hopes the city’s efforts to remove the tent encampment at Mass. and Cass will make a difference in shoplifting at South Bay. 

Hayden emphasized that his office is generally not interested in prosecuting one-time offenders. He also pointed to a diversion program the DA’s office launched called Services over Sentences, aimed at getting treatment for those suffering from addiction problems rather than prosecuting them for crimes related to drug use. “If someone is shoplifting because of a drug habit, you have to get them to stop the drug habit,” he said. 

But Hayden said it’s important to go after those arrested multiple times for shoplifting. “We have to make sure we’re not letting repeat offenders continue on,” he said. 

Hayden’s predecessor, Rachael Rollins, who was elected on a strong criminal justice reform platform, stirred controversy by issuing a list of 15 lower-level offenses, including shoplifting, for which she said the presumption would be not to prosecute. The approach was not that different from past practice in the DA’s office, but critics took issue with the visibility she gave to the policy and worried about the signal it sent both to would-be offenders and retailers. 

Hayden, who struck a more moderate tone in his 2022 campaign for the seat, said he has no such blanket policy on how to handle various charges. “I’ve always said we’re going to take cases on a case-by-case basis and divert cases when it’s appropriate,” he said. 

The Boston Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment on shoplifting trends in the city and the department’s strategy for addressing the problem. 

Kearney, the retailers association official, said stores were already facing tough competition from online sales, a situation further exacerbated by the decrease in foot traffic in business districts coming out of the pandemic. All of that, he said, makes any increase in shoplifting an even greater threat to their ability to stay in business. “They’re already behind the eight-ball,” he said. 

According to an annual national survey prepared by the National Retail Federation, the average “shrink rate,” which measures retailers’ losses, increased from 1.4 percent in fiscal year 2021 to 1.6 percent in fiscal year 2022. The change corresponded with an increase in losses from $93.9 billion to $112.1 billion, though the report said the 2022 rate was “in line with” shrink rates from 2019 and 2020. 

Kearney said Massachusetts retailers are concerned about a change included in the state’s 2018 criminal justice reform legislation that raised the felony threshold for larceny from $250 to $1,200. 

“The world has gotten out to folks doing this in a professional or repetitive manner,” he said of repeat shoplifters, suggesting they aim to keep the value of goods they steal below the threshold that would result in felony charges, if caught. 

The retailers group supports legislation filed by state Rep. David Muradian, a Grafton Republican, that would aggregate the value of all goods from shoplifting arrests of an individual over a six-month period to determine whether a felony charge could be filed. 

Hayden said the legislation is “worthy of consideration,” but cautioned that “the devil is always in the details.” 

He said it’s important to consider the broader impact of shoplifting on communities, citing it as the reason why a Walgreens closed a year ago in Roxbury’s Nubian Square. The store was one of three in Boston – the others were in Hyde Park and Mattapan – that the pharmacy chain closed at that time. 

“At the end of the day, it’s not good for our public, for the economic vibrancy of our communities for people to be able to rob our stores with impunity,” said Hayden. 

In press accounts at the time the company provided no specific reason for the closures, saying such decisions are based on “several factors,” including local market dynamics and shopping patterns.  

In October 2021, Walgreens cited “organized” shoplifting as the reason for shutting five stores in San Francisco. In January of this year, however, the company’s CFO said in an earnings call that Walgreens may have overstated the effect of shoplifting on its bottom line. 

There has been heightened attention in recent years to “smash-and-grab” incidents in which store windows are broken and thieves ransack its aisles, or mob shoplifting incidents in which a large crowd makes off with armfuls of goods. The number of media reports of smash-and-grab incidents in the US nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021, according to the new shoplifting report. But it said available data make it impossible to ascertain definitively whether the actual occurrence of such incidents has increased. 

Smash-and-grab or mob incidents account for a very small share of shoplifting incidents, but “it’s very likely that a good percentage of those go viral,” said Lopez, the report co-author. 

While store closures represent the most extreme reaction to high shoplifting rates, a more common sight is merchandise “stuck behind lock boxes,” said Kearney. That’s something “no retailer wants. It makes for bad customer experience,” he said. “If we want to have brick and mortar stores in our communities and the services they provide, we have to protect them.”  

The study gathered data directly from city or law enforcement department websites as well as from the National Incident-Based Reporting System operated by the FBI.

The report is based on police reports of shoplifting by retailers, so it only captures a fraction of actual cases. The report said changes in the likelihood of reporting incidents, including differences that may have taken place between cities studied, could also account for some of the variation among cities in shoplifting rates. 

“Potential factors include changes in retailers’ anti-theft measures and changes in how retailers report shoplifting to law enforcement, which could be based on their perceptions of the extent to which local police or prosecutors will apprehend suspects and pursue criminal charges,” the report said. “Because these data rely on reported incidents, they almost certainly undercount total shoplifting.”