Shoplifting costs every man, woman and child in Wales �70 a year, according to figures in a BBC Wales investigation.

That is the price passed on to shoppers shoppers as retailers are forced to offload their losses on law-abiding consumers.

With a girl and a pram, it's a good decoy

Shoplifter 'Dave'

The current affairs series, Week In Week Out, examines how goods worth more than �1.5m are stolen from stores across Wales each week.

The programme features a man who has stolen hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of goods to order.

The man, known as Dave, made hundreds of pounds an hour and describes how he used babies as decoys to fool security staff as he smuggled stolen goods out of stores.

He said: "They weren't my kids - if I wasn't with them doing it, earning money, somebody else would.

'Soft crime'

"With a girl and a pram, it's a good decoy - a shop assistant wouldn't say 'take the baby out of the cover, you might have something'."

The programme's investigators go undercover to follow a gang of professional shoplifters who have been targeting high streets across the country in the run-up to Christmas.

The thieves are caught on secret cameras, stuffing goods into bags and walking out without paying a penny.

Shoplifting now costs the UK more than burglary and car crime.

Professor Joshua Bamfield, of the Centre for Retail Research, in Nottingham, said that although half a million people are caught shoplifting each year, fewer than 10% appear in court.

He said: "At the moment it's seen as a 'soft crime' and very little happens, so people always vote for retail crime because it's easy and there is very little downside to it.

"It's straightforward economics - if it's expensive to be a retail thief, then you won't do it.

"But if it's cheap and nothing happens, then you will do it."

Week In Week Out is screened on BBC1 Wales at 2225 GMT on Tuesday 26 November