We’ve all seen the videos on our local news of shoplifters brazenly grabbing goods off store shelves, filling up garbage bags and running out of a store. As a result, it has become increasingly common to find locked plastic cases lining the aisles of our favorite stores, making it harder to grab a razor, medicine or even soap.
While waiting for an employee to dispense your razor is just a minor inconvenience – the costs of organized retail theft (ORC) are a much bigger deal. Hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory are lost to theft each year. To combat this growing problem, retailers are spending more on security, technology and insurance – costs that are all passed on to consumers.
But retailers can’t solve the problem by themselves. As inflation and now tariffs drive up the cost of goods even further, Americans deserve a solution that allows them to shop in stores where goods are readily available on shelves without further increasing prices. Retailers, law enforcement and online marketplaces, such as eBay where I work, must partner to find and implement a solution that makes organized retail crime a thing of the past.
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Organized retail crime describes coordinated efforts from groups of highly coordinated thieves to steal large amounts of merchandise from stores. The boosters then typically resell the stolen goods at flea markets or to known “fences.”
Headlines show organized retail crime is a problem from coast to coast and data backs up those anecdotes. Retailers reported a 93% increase in the average number of shoplifting incidents per year in 2023 versus 2019 and a 90% increase in dollar loss due to shoplifting over the same time period, according to a December report from the National Retail Federation. More than 75% of those polled said that organized retail crime was more of a concern than in past years. The poll also found the increase in thefts has brought a surge in violence.
Retailers have responded to the increase in thefts by limiting in-store stock and installing those now-prevalent plastic lockers. Some stores have taken more extreme measures by cutting hours and even shuttering these stores. Each of these “solutions” may help to prevent theft but they also make shopping far less convenient and cause prices to rapidly rise at a time when Americans are already struggling with higher costs.
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At eBay, we’ve seen firsthand the unique challenges that come with fighting organized retail crime. For nearly 20 years, we’ve partnered with retailers, law enforcement and elected officials to identify and dismantle crime rings.
Our industry-leading initiative, Partnering with Retailers Offensively Against Crime and Theft (PROACT), facilitates cooperation and partnerships that enable more effective investigations and prosecutions of those suspected of retail crime. In 2023 alone, we helped prevent an estimated $50 million from being stolen at CVS locations in 2023 through PROACT.
This experience has shown us that we cannot solve the problem alone. Successfully stopping organized retail crime requires collaboration between e-commerce companies, retailers, law enforcement and even Congress. Law enforcement and prosecutors need the tools to go after the sophisticated criminal syndicates behind organized retail crime. Fortunately, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Nevada Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto introduced the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA), to address the escalation in theft, fraud and other property crimes against retail stores and elements of the supply chain.
CORCA strengthens legal tools for law enforcement and establishes the Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center – a center within the Department of Homeland Security to combat organized retail and supply chain crime – to coordinate response efforts at the federal, state and local levels. The center would also collaborate with private industry on information sharing and investigations.
Passing this bill is a crucial step in the fight to stop organized retail crime. With help from Congress and continued partnership across retail, law enforcement, and prosecutors, we can stop organized retail crime and help ease prices for consumers. Perhaps the one industry that will oppose this work, however, is the manufacturers of plastic lock boxes.