The crime scene is an out-of-town supermarket in the shires. Lurking in the aisles, a polished thirtysomething woman (smart trench, Miu Miu wedges, expensive hair) snaffles a bar of organic chocolate into her Mulberry handbag. Meanwhile, over in aisle five, a professional- looking guy is filching a tube of Madagascan vanilla pods into the breast pocket of his suit. Neither looks destitute or mentally unstable. The sight triggers a bolt of shock: these are middle-class shoplifters.
Petty pilfering is rife among the chattering classes. According to the British Retail Consortium, the number of shoplifting incidents has risen by 70% since 2000 (that’s just those who were caught) and, increasingly, the culprits are well heeled rather than well hard. “The larger department stores even catch a millionaire shoplifter every couple of months,” says Professor Joshua Bamfield, of the Centre for Retail Research. “They always respond in the same way: ‘Oh, it’s all a desperate misunderstanding. It was the silly cashier.’ It’s never that they’ve run out of money or the cat is starving.”
An estimated 3.5m people in Britain are believed to have shoplifted. That’s more than one in 20. You could easily be one of them. A straw poll at a west London baby shower throws up a vocal minority of middle-class kleptos (MCKs). “Everyone’s at it,” one says. “It’s just what people do these days.” These are not the troubled Winonas, the homeless junkies or the full-time crims who can make a grand a week with carefully targeted fingerwork. Bamfield reckons the MCK is rather less successful, making just £30 or £40 a fortnight. “It’s not a reason to shoplift,” he says.
If it’s not about the money, then what? Well, politics, of course.
Most MCKs claim that pocketing big-brand goods is a form of consumer strike — a sustained direct-action protest. “F*** Tesco with its monopolising and community-crushing,” they say. “That’ll teach it for stealing from everyone else.” Confiscations are highly principled, made only from faceless corporations and posh department stores that whack on fat mark-ups, never from independent shops. “That would be like stealing from a person,” they say with righteous indignation.
Some MCKs push their principles even farther. “I’ll only steal from Switzerland,” one says. “It’s perfectly acceptable because the country is awash with money. Duty-free in Geneva is a nightmare.” She takes lip salves, batteries, designer sunglasses — anything she can get her hands on. “I’ve even taken a pair of skis,” she confesses. “I doubt anyone noticed.” Another refuses to pay for his razor blades. “
They’re a basic need,” he says, “and the profit margins are outrageous.” Over in Germany, the Hamburg for Free gang, a bunch of real-life Robin Hoods dressed as superheroes, plunders the city’s best delis for smoked salmon, Kobe beef and champagne to redistribute to the poor. If the MCK is to be believed, there really is honour among thieves.
In fact, far from being shrouded with shame, the label is considered something of a middle-class status symbol, a badge of honour earned through cunning acts of social rebellion. Political shoplifting is swiftly followed by boasting (not so much “this old thing”, as: “Oh, it was a steal — literally”) and moral justification by the bucketload. “It’s a victimless crime,” says one who likes to purloin from the big brands. “It’s not the same as pillaging all the pies from Mrs Plumpton’s family bakery. My acts don’t threaten the community, because the chain stores have already wiped it out.” Nicking stuff is better than boycotting, the MCKs claim, because it doesn’t just deny the firms their profit, it costs them. “Besides,” another bourgeois thief adds, “the cost of shoplifting is built into company accounts — it goes to show what their profits must be like.”
Of course, it’s not entirely selfless. Shoplifting gives its perpetrator a considerable buzz. “It’s like gambling with the law,” says one bored, wealthy housewife with a taste for expensive cosmetics. “It’s a naughty thrill in a world dulled by law and order. It’s a bit of a sport to me. You’re running the gauntlet, where the stakes are huge and the gains minimal, and you come out feeling a bit of a hero. The process — the fear, the racing heart, the getaway — is as exhilarating as the trophies themselves. And it delivers a much more intimate relationship with the products. Shoplifting is like having an affair or taking drugs — it’s always: ‘How much can I get away with?’”
But surely theft is theft, whatever your motives? One recovering MCK, who used to steal his lunch daily, says: “I always relished it. I’d repeat to myself, ‘Big companies make the little people suffer.’ But shoplifting doesn’t hurt the people at the top; only those further down the food chain, including the consumer. And if I’m honest with myself, I think it was more driven by stinginess and greed, dressed up as a dubiously superior morality.”
Bamfield has a slightly different take on it. “The more middle-class you are,” he says, “the more you expect the shops to grovel. It’s about entitlement. They [the shoplifters] think the world isn’t fair to them any more, and they’re less concerned about the moral boundaries.” That extends, he believes, to a conviction on the part of the MCK that the stores actually owe them something, such as that lipstick or box of luxury mince pies.
The spoof preacher Rev Billy, from the New York-based Church of Stop Shopping, is on your — sorry, their — side. “We support shoplifters like the gourmet Robin Hoods of Hamburg. That’s wonderful work. We just pray that people make it as political as possible. It’s not political unless the multinationals know about it, and they’ll never notice unless you tell them.”
Rev Billy and his church are veteran shoplifters of a kind. As many as 40 of them regularly storm a Starbucks and literally lift everything that isn’t nailed down — chairs, tables, ashtrays — into the air. Then one of them will preach to the hapless congregation on the provenance of each item — sweatshops, pesticide-drenched fields, unsustained forests. They then replace everything and leave — no five-finger discounts here. “It’s a slippery slope from politically motivated stealing to lining one’s pockets,” the good reverend says. “I would advise my brothers and sisters to do the research — know for sure why you would Robin Hood this company, organise your fellow consumers and go public. Bless you, and hallelujah!”
