Seven retailing companies have launched a multi-million pound crime initiative to combat the increasing menace of store thefts.

High street shops and police across Scotland will draw up a high-tech list of convicted and suspected shoplifters, which they say cost consumers up to �180m a year.

Videos of shoplifters help create profiles

The multi-city initiative, Retailers Against Crime, will construct the massive database - a veritable "who's who" of consumer criminals - of detailed information about known shoplifters and retail criminals.

All existing files on shoplifters held by the seven participating chain stores, including rivals Marks and Spencer and BHS, plus police information will be fed into the RACS database at the Scottish Business Crime Centre in Stirling.

Photographs, descriptions, whether the shoplifters work in teams, if they have aliases, even past criminal records will be filed in the database.

Professional thieves, however, claim that even the most sophisticated equipment will not stop them from stealing.

Police will compile detailed profiles

One professional thief, known only as Dave, said he has been shoplifting for eight years. He told a Frontline Scotland documentary, which airs on Tuesday on BBC 1, that there is no security system available which can "catch a professional".

"It takes a thief to catch a thief. Sometimes they're on top, sometimes we are on top. They're not going to catch a professional. And if they do, it's pot luck."

The RAC's Graham Maben agrees that it will be difficult.

He says that many professional shoplifting groups run their operation like a business. They have a profit-and-loss account, a transport department and distributers.

Some of them even fly weekly to London to shoplift from the larger department stores and most of the goods are sold on the Continent.

Nevertheless, the RAC has high hopes.

The initiative will be tested in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. But the group hopes to extend the trial to prevent shoplifters throughout Scotland.

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