Ryan* is 25 and he’s a shoplifter. He’s good at it too – about four times a week, he makes “no small money” by stealing and reselling goods from large department stores where security is limited. He’s strategic: he makes sure he’s clean and tidy, and keeps aware of CCTV. He usually steals just one or two high-value items to limit the risk of detection – designer garments or a small speaker, which he slips into a bag as he walks around the shop, before browsing a little longer and exiting.

His actions are part of recent record highs in shoplifting offences. From March 2024 to March 2025, there were 530,643 offences recorded in England and Wales. This is a 20% rise on the previous year and the highest figure since current police recording practices began in 2003. There has been ample media coverage of this spike, helped by the recent scandal of a Waitrose worker being sacked after confronting a man stealing Easter eggs. Retail workers are suffering on the frontline; in its 2026 crime survey, the British Retail Consortium found that theft was “a major trigger for violence and abuse of staff”, leading the trade union for retail workers to warn that “shoplifting is not a victimless crime”. Meanwhile, the claim that Britain’s shoplifting “epidemic” symbolises a wider descent into “lawlessness” has become a familiar one in the media.

Ryan is one of several habitual shoplifters I got to know while researching how people who are chronically homeless (in and out of homelessness over long periods of their lives) make an income. There was also Paul, 38, who often steals alcohol, meat or cheese but remains open to unexpected opportunities as they come along: he came to our interview zinging with excitement at having spotted a hairdressing salon with the door open and no staff visible. “Two hairdressing chairs, pure sitting there … I could sell them,” he said. Patrick, 31, steals alcohol and sometimes drinks it himself, but he........

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