Every year thousands of people are arrested and taken to court for shop-lifting. In Britain alone, about HK$ 3,000,000’s worth of goods are stolen from shops every week. As a result of this "shrinkage" as the shops call it, the honest public has to pay higher prices.
Shop-lifters can be divided into three main categories: the professionals, the deliberate amateurs, and the people who just can’t help themselves. The professionals do not pose much of a problem for the store detectives, who, assisted by closed circuit television and various other technological devices, can usually cope with them. The professionals tend to go for high value goods in parts of the shops where security measures are tightest. And, in any case, they account for only a small percentage of the total losses due to shop-lifting.
The same applies to the deliberate amateur who is to speak, a professional in training. Most of them get caught sooner or later, and they are dealt with severely by the coups.
The real problem is the person who gives way to a sudden temptation and is in all other respects an honest and law-abiding citizen. Contrary to what one would expect, this kind of ship-lifter is rarely poor. He does not steal because he needs the goods and cannot afford to pay for them. He steals because he simply cannot stop himself. And there are countless others who, because of age sickness or plain absentmindedness, simply forget to pay for what they take from the shops.
In order to prevent the growth on ship-lifting offences, some stores, in fact are doing their best to separate the thieves from the confused by prohibiting customers from taking bags into the store. However, what is most worrying about the whole problem is that it is yet another instance of the innocent majority being penalized and inconvenienced because of the actions of a small minority. It is the aircraft hijack situation in anther form. Because of the possibility of one passenger in a million boarding an aircraft with a weapon, the other 999,999 passengers much Subject themselves to searches and delays. Unless the situation in the shops improves, in ten years’ time we may all have to subject ourselves to a body search every time we go into a store to buy a tin of beans! The third group of people steal things because they ______.