Gangs up and down England are operating slick shoplifting networks in which vulnerable women and children are forced to steal goods from expensive shops.
Members of the gangs have been arrested in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Darlington.
Retailers Against Crime (RAC), a non-profit organisation, is believed to be tracking at least 56 shoplifting groups connected to organised crime.
The gangs’ activities go beyond theft and have been linked to drugs, firearms, and human trafficking.
Maxine Fraser, managing director at RAC, works with several police forces up and down the country monitoring the groups.
At present, the RAC has ties with Police Scotland and 1,500 shops in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the north of England.
The group in its sights, which it has tracked since 2019, consists of 154 people, is based in Glasgow and travels across the UK to operate.
There are a number of children within the gang who have been trafficked to the UK with the sole purpose of shoplifting, Ms Fraser told the BBC.
Four girls that the group has tracked arrived in the country in 2019 and are still working with the group.
“They’ve all been here in the UK since they were between 12 and 14 years old,” Ms Fraser told the BBC. “There are probably in the region of 15 children working in this group at the moment.”
While many members of the gang have even been arrested and jailed for shoplifting, lenient sentencing means they spend little time in prison. When they are released, the cycle of shoplifting continues.
According to the British Retail Consortium, shoplifting cost retailers a combined £953million in 2022.
There has, it said, been a 25 percent rise in reported incidents, with organised crime groups blamed for the biggest proportion of offences.
Eastern European gangs flying in people to engage in organised crime is no new phenomenon.
In 2014, tens of people were reportedly arriving in the UK and joining such groups, from countries such as Poland and Lithuania on cheap budget airline flights.
Back then, Scotland Yard was just identifying a new definition of modern slavery in the form of shoplifting gangs.
The gangs were understood to accept a 20 percent arrest rate as the cost of a “weekend trafficking” operation, according to the police, which could secure items worth up to £100,000 that are then taken out of the country for resale.
Suspects who were arrested at the time said they had been coerced into carrying out the crimes for fear of what would happen to their families if they refused.
The chiefs of the gangs are understood to specifically recruit women and children because they are seen as unlikely culprits.
However, men are often in on the operations, running things from the periphery.
Prosecutors hearing the cases of individuals involved in such cases have the tricky task of balancing justice with potential human rights violations.
Adam Ratcliff, a former police officer who runs the Safer Business Network, regularly reviews footage of incidents believed to involve shoplifting gangs.
While he said they have specific aims, he noted the destitute nature of their lives in the UK.
“It’s a godawful life for these people, they are vulnerable and have been exploited,” he told the BBC.
“Their lives are horrific. They are living in houses of multiple occupancy, 30, 40 of them at a time, sleeping on mattresses in dirty rooms, being used and abused as criminals for financial gain.”
