Shoplifting on the rise in Germany

Germany has never had more shoplifters than in 2024. An annual survey of 98 retailers estimates a 3 percent increase on the year before — amounting to some €4.95 billion ($5.84 billion) in losses.

The latest study by Germany's Retail Institute (EHI) on "inventory differences" shows that the vast majority of those losses (€4.2 billion) was down to theft from customers, employees, or delivery workers, the EHI said, which would mean losses of some €570 million to the public purse through lost sales tax.

The EHI also said that retailers had to resort to balancing out their losses, and the costs of extra security, by increasing prices. Study author Frank Horst calculated that some 1.5 percent of prices in stores could now be attributed to covering theft and security.

Shoplifting techniques

The EHI said there had also been a 5 percent increase in organized shoplifting, which accounted for a third of the total shoplifting losses. Horst said this could be individual thieves working their way through a "shopping list," or else, the thefts could be carried out by coordinated groups.

"One of them drives a vehicle, one of them distracts the staff, or shields the one putting the goods away so they can't be seen," Horst told DW. "Sometimes so-called depots are set up in the store, where all the goods are packed in a bag, and then someone else carries it out in a surreptitious moment."

The survey does not include exact breakdowns of the kinds of articles that get stolen, but Horst says that thieves often target anything small, expensive, and that can be easily re-sold, such as perfume and cosmetics. There had also been a rise in the theft of foods, especially relatively expensive things like meats and cheeses.

But Nicole Bögelein, criminologist at Cologne University, cast doubt on how useful the study actually is. She told DW that the researchers estimate that 98 percent of cases aren't even discovered.

"So it's just an assumption that the majority of these losses can be attributed to theft," she said.

Bögelein also cast doubt on the EHI's conclusion that there are more organized shoplifting gangs, as that could simply be because store detectives are more on the lookout for such groups.

'Poverty crimes'

Despite its shortcomings, the annual EHI survey is one of the few shoplifting studies there are, and it is focused mostly on the economic impact. Bögelein, by training a sociologist as well as a criminologist, has a different perspective, and says that almost all cases of shoplifting are so-called "poverty crimes" — defined as crimes that don't cost any money to carry out, and are committed by people because they have no money.

Bögelein's own investigations into shoplifting have found that the people who are caught are often poor — possibly, she says, also because store detectives are more likely to keep an eye on people who "look poor."

Official statistics suggest that the majority of thefts from shops are relatively petty. According to German federal police statistics, in 66.7 percent of discovered and prosecuted thefts, the value of the items stolen was under €50 and in 40.2 percent of cases even under €15. The punishment is usually a small fine, or, if the fine can't or won't be paid, a prison sentence.

Germany a 'paradise' for shoplifters?

Horst described Germany as a "paradise" for shoplifters, as the punishments are often relatively mild. Though theoretically thieves can be imprisoned for up to five years, he said that in practice first-time offenders are often not charged at all.

Bögelein said that deterrence might have an effect for some minor thefts, but was generally skeptical of the idea that more punishment discourages petty crime.

"People don't not steal because they're scared of punishment," she argued. "In criminology, we find that people stick to rules because they think those rules are correct and because they fear a bad conscience if they don't stick to them."

Should shoplifting be decriminalized?

There has been a debate among German criminologists about to what extent "poverty crimes" should be decriminalized altogether, on the grounds that such crimes are usually victimless and therefore don't require criminal justice.

There have long been calls to downgrade one classic "poverty crime" — riding public transport without a ticket — to a misdemeanor, partly because punishing it has become a burden to public coffers and is clogging up the justice system. Between 8,000 and 9,000 people end up in prison in Germany every year for riding without a ticket.

But Horst argued that shoplifting shouldn't always be defined as a poverty crime: The EHI estimates that two-thirds of shoplifting cases were what he called "opportunistic perpetrators," and many of them are not necessarily poor.

Horst does think that inflation and higher prices for basic items may be playing a role in the rise of shoplifting, but he was reluctant to accept that poverty was the driving element of all theft.

"It could be a protest theft, because people are saying they're not prepared to accept the price rises for a particular product," he said, "I'm sure poverty is a part of it, but that it explains the rise on its own — I don't see that."

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