I was in a supermarket last week and I saw a woman walking out of the front doors with a trolley load of shopping she hadn’t paid for, writes Clinton Rogers.
She’d been standing next to me, using the self-scan machines.
Security stopped her, and I didn’t wait around long enough to discover whether it was a genuine mistake (just forgot to pay) or a brazen attempt to defraud the store.
When I got home, I saw the story about a Waitrose employee who had been sacked for tackling a shoplifter.
He felt he was helping his employer, doing the right thing – they said he was breaking company rules, which said staff were not to intervene.
It all set me wondering, how do we solve the epidemic of shoplifting?
Does anyone have an answer?
And the Waitrose case has left people questioning whether, as a nation, we are going soft on this retail crime.
I understand the 'hands off' policy of companies like Waitrose (and they are not alone).
After all, no bottle of wine or an armful of Easter eggs is worth a life.
And even locally, in Wellington, I have heard of supermarket staff being threatened with a knife.
Yet the optics are uncomfortable.
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In the Waitrose case, a man acts, perhaps unwisely, perhaps against the rules, but in defence of his employer’s stock, and is punished.
Meanwhile, the thief walks.
It is little wonder that critics say the balance has tipped too far.
This debate is not unfolding in a vacuum.
Shoplifting across England and Wales is now nudging record levels, with more than 519,000 offences recorded in a year, part of a steady rise that retailers say is becoming more brazen and more organised.
And here in Somerset, retailers will tell you theft is no longer occasional, but routine.
Items once pilfered discreetly are now swept up in bulk.
What has changed is not just the volume, but the confidence.
Part of that, some argue, stems from a perception that consequences are limited.
Low-value thefts are often dealt with through cautions or community resolutions.
For overstretched police forces, shoplifting can slip down the priority list.
Avon and Somerset Police insist they do take shoplifting seriously and argue that with the help of CCTV, they are prosecuting more shoplifters.
But laws alone rarely solve what is, at heart, a social and economic issue.
Poverty, addiction, and opportunity all play their part.
Some argue that if you crack down too hard, you risk criminalising desperation.
Yet do too little, and you embolden those who exploit the system.
For sure, it is a complicated problem with no easy solution.
Until one is found, the uneasy sense will remain; that shoplifting is not just rising but, in some quarters at least, becoming normalised.
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