Association of Charity Shops

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Association of Charity Shops

• SCOTTISH CHARITY RETAIL CONFERENCE
• At A Loss to Prevent Theft
• Salisbury Room, John McIntyre Centre

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At a Loss to Prevent Theft?

• What steps can you take?
• Steve Learmouth
• Retail Loss Prevention and HS Manager
• Cancer Research UK

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How much are you losing?

• Commercial Retailers lose about 1 of their sales
  each year to retail crime.
• Charity Retail is estimated to lose 5 10
• If a Charity Shop has 1 item worth 5 stolen
  each day of the week, every week of the year, it
  would lose 1500 p.a.

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Cost of Retail Crime in the UK 2006

• Cost of Crime per Head 72.56 per annum
• Customer Theft 1691.7m
• Staff Theft 1486.7m

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Internal theft

• What does internal theft mean?
• Who is responsible?
• What is stolen?

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Internal Theft

• How can I realise its happening?
• What can I do to detect it?
• How do I stop it?
• Whats next?

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Internal Theft - loses

• One third of commercial retailers losses are
  known to be the result of staff theft.
• Figure unknown for Charity Retailing.
• Charity Retailers rely more on trust and less on
  tight financial and operating procedures than do
  commercial retailers.

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Key Preventative Measures

• Culture of Intolerance
• Loss Prevention Programme
• Cash Controls
• Stock Controls
• Regular Monitoring

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Culture of Intolerance

• Communicating effectively that theft and
  dishonesty will not be tolerated
• Introducing a comprehensive Loss Prevention
  Programme
• Clarifying disciplinary procedures,including a
  willingness to prosecute.
• Confirming the right to conduct bag searches and
  deploy covert surveillance.
• Setting up a mechanism for suspicfions of
  dishonesty and malpractice to be reported in
  confidence, without fear of retribution.

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Loss Prevention Programme

• This pulls together all relevant policies with
  new measures where required and training of
  staff/volunteers at all levels. It not only
  includes Cash and Stock controls, but also
  Personnel procedures such as checking references,
  probationary periods and induction training.

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Cash Controls

• Till Procedures - such as operators signing on
  and off till, giving a receipt for every
  transaction, controlling Voids, No Sales,
  Refunds, and Exchanges. Recording cash donations,
  petty cash payments and staff purchases.
• Cashing Up Procedure such as reconciling money
  with Z readings and paying in slips, recording Z
  reading numbers, having 2 signatures or splitting
  duties, banking daily.

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Stock Controls

• Collected Stock controls covering supplies of
  stock, envelopes and leaflets, driver time and
  activity logs, collection records.
• Procedures for the removal of items for
  cleaning etc, valuation or sale at auction, for
  staff purchases, for the storage of personal
  possessions, for bag searches.
• Registers for valuables, stock removed from the
  premises, stock movements between shops, staff
  purchases, rag sales, bag searches.

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Regular Monitoring

• Shop Managers till checks, till roll review,
  shift and daily sales trends, collection results.
• Area Managers till and safe checks, back room
  registers, operational audits, sales trends
• Finance prompt submission of correctly
  completed weekly forms and supporting documents,
  daily banking, cash and till discrepancies.
• Auditors internal or external independent
  checks on all financial and security records and
  procedures, mystery shopping to test purchase and
  donation transcations.

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Case Study

• The chance to give some thought to every day
  issues and come up with some solutions! The
  following case study is based on real experience
  within Charity retailing
• What would you do to investigate this?
• What would you do to prevent similar situations
  occurring?

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Session 1

• A new volunteer at you shop comes to you and says
  there are 2 unhappy customers who want to talk to
  you. One lady says that she just gave a 20
  donation to the cashier who did not put the note
  in the till or collection box, but put it in his
  pocket and later walked out of the shop saying he
  was going for lunch. The second customer confirms
  that she saw this happen. From their description
  of the money taking the money, it was a trusted
  and reliable New Deal placement worker to whom
  you have delegated certain tasks, including
  emptying the donation box regularly.

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External Theft

• What does this mean?
• Who is responsible?
• How can I stop it?

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Shoplifters who are they?

• The Professional Shoplifter who makes a living
  out of stealing.
• The juvenile who steals for a lark or in response
  to peer pressure.
• The drug addict who steals to support a drug
  habit.
• The person who steals out of poverty, for
  material need, like shoes for the family.
• The forgetful person
• The compulsive or pathological type of shoplifter
  which includes people who may be depressed.

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Men or Women

• Shop Theft accounted for 18 of all offences
  admitted by women.
• Shop Theft accounted for 6 of mens crimes.
• Shop lifting was the commonest offence admitted
  by girls under 15.

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CRAVED what the thief will steal

• Concealable
• Removable
• Available
• Valued
• Enjoyed
• Disposable

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Deterrent

• Among a group of ex-offenders consulted about
  their criminal activities, the best deterrent in
  their opinion was the presence of staff near the
  target areas and other staff that followed them
  around the store

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Deterrents

• Radio links operated by local council
• Buddy system with other Charity/Commercial shops.
• Recruit ex security staff as volunteers
• Extra volunteers on shop floor at busy times and
  on opening and closing the shop.

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True Life Experience

• Ive seen a woman trying to shoplift from a
  Charity jumble sale. The item she was trying to
  steal was a huge eiderdown, which she was
  attempting to drag out of the room behind her. If
  she offered to pay in the normal way she would
  have probably been charged about 50p and if she
  said she really hadnt the money then wed have
  given it to her for nothing. Some people just
  seem to get a kick out of stealing or get used to
  doing it that they carry on doing it just because
  they can, not because theres any need.

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Case Study

• The chance to give some thought to every day
  issues and come up with some solutions! The
  following case study is based on real experience
  within Charity retailing
• What would you do to investigate this?
• What would you do to prevent similar situations
  occurring?

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Session 2

• You have 2 Staff on the shop floor, one notifys
  you that there is a suspicious customer who does
  not appear to be interested in buying anything,
  but keeps looking at them. In addition the person
  looks nervous and is shaking a lot. The worrying
  aspect is that they are dragging a black plastic
  bag around with them and has now left it under a
  row of designer label clothing.

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The Good News

• The largest shrinkage reduction in Europe was the
  UK down from 1.77 in 2002 to 1.33 in 2006.
• The UK no longer has the highest shrinkage rate
  in Western Europe now No3

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Questions?