A recent video on Twitter showed a supermarket employee tussling with a shoplifter who had filled her bag with items. As the employee pulled the bag from her hand, she cried, “I have to feed my family!” That’s a common refrain from shoplifters these days, echoed in media headlines proclaiming that people have turned to stealing to put food on the table — despite a US social safety net that includes $185 billion in spending on food stamps and other nutrition-assistance programs.
In truth, America’s exploding shoplifting problem predates our current economic difficulties. Much of the stealing, store owners and security experts say, has less to do with putting food on the table than with a rise in organized theft, and it’s having a particularly adverse effect in cities where criminal-justice reforms have made it easy to get away with.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Steven Malanga is the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior editor at City Journal. Adapted from City Journal.
Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for CVS Pharmacy
