Scams, Stealing, Theft - Research Paper Example

Theft in itself is always evolving and can be classified into a myriad of different groups, where each kind is punishable with varying penalties. Carjacking, commonly referred to as auto theft, is the stealing of motor vehicles. Stealing is an offense that results in punishments such as fines and jail terms. In contemporary society, theft is fast becoming the number one global crime with surveys indicating that over a quarter of jailed person in major world nations is serving time in prisons on theft-related convictions. This is not to mention the numerous cases that often go unreported or unnoticed by the law. One of the most notorious kinds of theft in the present age is shoplifting. Shoplifting refers to the removal of an item (goods) from a sales shop (shop) without paying for it.

Several questions continue to trouble mankind concerning the crime of theft. What triggers a person to steal? Is there a specific age at which one is transformed into a thief? Who is to blame for the alarming increase in theft cases around the world? What can be done to curb the tendency to steal? This essay attempts to answer these questions in a fair, well-informed, and well-supported way using expert opinions, experiences, and global surveys.

Sampled Statistics
As per the results of Jack L. Hayes International’s 26th Annual Retail Theft Survey, approximately 1.2 million dishonest workers and shoplifters were caught in the year 2013 in the United States alone. Equally more surprising is the fact that these apprehensions were done in only the 23 retail companies that were surveyed with more than USD 200 million recovered from these thefts. These figures continue to rise yearly and were noticeably higher than the statistics for the previous year, 2012. With increasing retail thefts, shop owners are facing huge annual losses with innocent consumers forced to pay higher prices for goods to cover the losses from theft. This theft thus results in a lot of damage to the economy. In addition, several court hours are inevitably lost on issues of shoplifting, with an unpalatable backlog of cases ensuing, along with strenuous police work necessary to weed out these crimes.

In this 2013 survey, a total of 1,102,635 shoplifting arrests were made, which was 2.5% higher than the figure for 2012. For dishonest employees, 78,085 arrests were made, which was 6.5% higher than the statistics from the year 2012. More than USD 50 million was recovered from these employees, which was 2.5% higher than the value for the previous year. The processed data indicates that one in every 40 employees in the United States stole from their employers, with dishonest workers stealing 5 times more than the value stolen by shoplifters.

Many organizations and industries across the world are slowed down/ retarded by employee theft. It is indeed becoming a major concern for the modern-day industry with steady rises in the phenomenon being observed annually. Employee theft is considerably crippling organizations as employees steal significant and costly supplies and not cheap items such as paper clips and pens. There are currently 27 million shoplifters in the United States with over 10 million persons reported to have been caught shoplifting in the last half-decade alone. Research also shows that a quarter of shoplifters are children with the remaining three-quarters being adults.

Over half of adult shoplifters confess that they started shoplifting in their childhood and teen years. Evidence also indicates that most the shoplifting incidences are not pre-mediated, that is, the offenders (most of them) do not often plan to do the crimes beforehand. Serial shoplifters steal about 1.7 times each week. 90% of recently surveyed children reckon they know other children who shoplift, with over half of them saying they even hang out with the shoplifting children. Read More