National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

4.3 Shoplifting
4.3.1 Introduction and scope
The discussion of shoplifting in this section focuses on organised shoplifting
committed by criminal organisations that are active at the supraregional
level. The criminal organisations can have their headquarters both in the
Netherlands and abroad, and a combination of the two is also possible in the
form of organisations with members living in the Netherlands and members
living elsewhere.
4.3.2 General context
Shoplifting is an offence that is easy to commit. It requires few resources and
the working hours are good. The organised form of shoplifting is committed
by specialised criminal organisations. They often target various branches of
relatively large retail chains.
4.3.3 Scale
In 2006 the Retail Trade Platform published a report which concluded that
35% of all shoplifting cases were committed by supraregional criminal
organisations. On the basis of reports to the police, this would mean that these
gangs are responsible for 12,000 to 16,000 cases of shoplifting every year. The
willingness to report this offence to the police is supposed to be around 23%.
In other words, the actual scale of this offence is between 50,000 and 70,000
shoplifting incidents. There has been a downward trend since 2002, but this
trend has levelled off in recent years. Relatively few investigations have been
conducted into criminal organisations that systematically engage in shoplifting:
2 in 2004, 6 in 2005 and 6 in 2006.
4.3.4 Criminal organisation
According to the trade association Retail Trade Platform, the members of the
criminal organisations involved in organised shoplifting generally come from the
former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania. The limited number of investigation
files available reveal a similar picture: almost all groups come from Eastern
Europe. Some criminal organisations can be included among the traditional
mobile gangs; the members of other organisations have already been living in
the Netherlands for quite a while. When committing the thefts, specially
150 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime