What’s driving the ram raids, and what to do about it
FIRST Security
Using the latest global trends to provide innovative security solutions to protect what matters to you.
In this latest in a series of research-based crime and security insights, Scott La Franchie, FIRST Security’s General Manager – Marketing and Product, identifies the levers available to retailers to protect their stores, people, and product.
During the past few weeks we’ve been witnessing a?spate of ram raids ?across New Zealand. Shopping malls, high-end stores, and dairies are being hit seemingly nightly by vehicle mounted thieves targeting clothing, cigarettes, luxury goods and other attractive portable items.
Media coverage, political commentary, and police reportage all appear to agree that the attacks represent a spike, and that they are noteworthy not just for their frequency but also for their brazenness.?A late April ram raid ?of Ormiston Mall in Auckland, for example, involved three vehicles and several more perpetrators.
What commentators are not so agreed on are the factors that have contributed to the spike. Nor are they particularly aligned on the solutions.
In this post, I look at the drivers of the incidents and what retailers can do about it in terms of three simple relationships:
Crime: Risk and Reward
Why has there been a spike in ram raids and related retail crime? Who is doing it, what’s behind it, and for how long has it been happening?
According to Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers, data indicates that 88 percent of the ram raid offenders are under 20 years and the majority are under 17. Oranga Tamariki says most of those involved in the recent spike in youth crime are kids it is?already working with .
Detective Inspector Karen Bright?has also commented ?that offenders as young as 11 years old have been posting their exploits online, and that this is “driving some of the offending," she said. Also influencing the offending, she said, are wider issues around education, family dynamics and social media.
Many retailers, and the political opposition, blame law enforcement resourcing, the police?pursuit policy , the justice system’s approach to juvenile offending, and a government apparently ‘soft on crime’.
While any or all of the above factors may have some relevance, none of them directly explain why the spike is happening right now.
According to the?Youth Justice Indicators Summary Report – December 2021 , for example, offending rates among youth have dropped by 63% over the past decade, which diminishes perspectives pointing to youth issues as a driver. Furthermore, factors such as education and government justice and law enforcement policies significantly predate the current spike.
What the spike has coincided with is what many are calling a ‘cost of living crisis’, which has unfolded off the back of a three-decade high annual inflation rate of 5.9 percent.
As I wrote in my?previous blog post , various studies have found that inflation is a driver of property crime such as theft. By lowering the real incomes of people already struggling to make ends meet, inflation results in an increase in the demand for stolen goods, and in doing to it creates an economic environment that motivates thieves.
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Against this background, it’s worth noting Auror CEO Phil Thomson’s comment that most of the ram-raids were not opportunistic and instead were methodically planned attacks. “The majority of what we're seeing is coming from organised and repeat offenders,” he told?Radio New Zealand . “They will move from shop to shop stealing and then sell those goods online or in marketplaces.”
Ultimately, the conversation around what’s driving this spike in retail crime can be distilled in terms of what’s called the Risk/Reward Ratio – the risk of getting caught versus the potential reward. If we accept the premise that inflation increases demand for stolen goods, then we can conclude that the spike is the result of a calculation by organised perpetrators that increased demand means increased reward.
Risk: Likelihood and Consequence
While macroeconomic factors may have pushed up the reward side of the risk/reward equation for perpetrators, what about the risk side?
Risk is typically calculated as the function of likelihood and consequence (Risk = Likelihood x Consequence), where likelihood is the probability of an event occuring and consequence is the impact of the occurrence.
In the context of a thief perpetrating a criminal act, the risk borne by the thief is the likelihood of failure (e.g. walking away with nothing, or walking away in handcuffs) times the potential consequences of failure (e.g. penalties such as a criminal record or custodial sentence).
If a perpetrator considers the likelihood of failure in relation to a potential job to be high then they might scratch it and consider an alternative plan. If the likelihood of failure is low but the potential consequences are big, the perpetrator may also consider the job too risky.
But, if a potential job is perceived as involving a low likelihood and low consequence of failure, then it’s game on.
It’s a stark equation for retailers. As the criminal justice system is solely responsible for the penalty levers that dictate the ‘consequence’ side of the equation, this leaves retailers to attempt tweaking the ‘likelihood’ side. In other words, what can retailers do to increase a shoplifter’s likelihood of failure.
Likelihood: Security and Law Enforcement
Apart from the perpetrator’s skill in the planning and execution of an act, the two key factors influencing their likelihood of failure are (i) the efficacy of any security measures that are in place, and (ii) police response.
While retailers can’t control the law enforcement approach to retail crime (apart from reporting crimes to the police and lobbying for greater police focus on retail crime), they can exert control over how they secure their stores.
Security measures can deter, delay, detect and deny shoplifting. CCTV, for example, can act as a visible deterrent as well as a tool for detection. Bollards can deter ram raids and ultimately deny them success. Locks and other forms of hardening can delay intruders, and a security guarding presence delivers strong deterrence, observational and reporting capability and an effective interface with police responders.
Ultimately, security measures are least effective when used as ‘point solutions’, and are most effective when deployed as part of a range of measures specific to the premises and the threats it faces. The most effective measures are the result of good professional security advice.
I look forward to highlighting more research-based crime and security insights in future blog posts. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss how FIRST Security can assist your organisation to mitigate its security risks.