Shoplifters carrying shopping lists, says M&S manager

Shoplifters walk into branches of Marks & Spencer with a list in an attempt to get away with hauls worth thousands of pounds, a regional manager says.

Elisa Lewis, who is responsible for M&S shops in Shropshire, said shoplifting was a "really large issue" and could be "a daily, possibly even hourly, occurrence".

"In my experience it can be anybody," she said. "It can be a bored housewife who's just nicking a jacket for a bit of fun, and the people who we do catch are sometimes those we least expect."

Some shoplifters were people experiencing alcohol or drug dependence who said they were "just doing it to survive".

As a physically smaller woman, she said she found tackling some of them "intimidating", but had become more hardened to it through experience.

Figures collected by the BBC show a slight fall in the number of shoplifting offences across England and Wales in the past financial year and that was mirrored in the West Mercia police force area.

Marks and Spencer has a policy of issuing lifetime bans to shoplifters, which Lewis said could be a big deterrent and a big shock, especially to younger offenders.

But she said sometimes it turned out to be a genuine accident and they took people to their in-house detention room to try to understand their motivations before acting.

In some cases it is no accident though, and she said: "They've come in with a special order, and they go around stealing to order, and that can go into thousands of pounds depending on what people are asking for."

She said the run up to Christmas was always a peak time for shoplifting, with people wanting presents and money.

She also said the quieter times of the day tended to be the peak hours.

"Usually you find in your first hour of trade is where you get people who are reliant on money, drugs, etc," she said.

"They will head for your meat, your alcohol, your suits, because that's what they'll get the most money for."

Lewis said she had seen the level of shoplifting increase and decrease in line with the cost of living, but added: "When there is a presence in the town, they are deterred."

Insp Ingrid Tozer, the West Mercia Police officer responsible for Shrewsbury town centre, said an increased police presence there was making a difference.

Since October there have been six police officers and a sergeant based in the town, and she said incidents of shoplifting had fallen.

"The feedback has been fantastic," she said, and the force believed it had issued criminal behaviour orders to the most prolific offenders.

But engaging traders has been a challenge.

PC Joseph Bradley, one of the police officers based in Shrewsbury, said: "We spent quite a bit of time trying to encourage the shops to report thefts into us.

"We went through a period when we weren't necessarily getting a lot of reports in."

He has worked in the town for 16 years and said he had spent a lot of time building up relationships with traders to make that happen.

That was backed up by Cath Harmer from Shrewsbury BID - a group that represents businesses in the town.

She is the Safer Shrewsbury coordinator, responsible for the Shrewsbury Rangers - a security team which patrols the streets, assisting shopkeepers and the police.

Harmer said: "There is a tendency for retailers to absorb that theft rather than reporting it," and added she wanted to make sure they continued reporting crime.

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