Major retailers worked together to connect more than one million dots between repeat and organised offenders last year using retail crime intelligence platform, Auror.
According to Auror, this global milestone was achieved through structured crime reporting across retailers within the Auror Network, which allows users to verify links between multiple events involving the same individuals.
Retail crime
US retailers worked together to connect retail crime more than 730,000 times last year.
This gives retailers and law enforcement the real picture of offending patterns across stores, cities and jurisdictions.
It gives them the insight to see that the top 10% of offenders are responsible for more than 65% of retail crime in the US, and that those repeat offenders are up to three times more likely to be violent or use a weapon.
Auror said that alongside its partners, it is on a shared mission to reduce violent retail crime by 50% in five years through stronger collaboration between retailers and law enforcement, whilst focusing on the highest harm offenders.
“The key to making stores safer”
Phil Thomson, Co-Founder and CEO of Auror said: “Retailers have always captured this information about crime, but the way they did it was different from store to store – some would use sticky notes, USB sticks or CDs and others might use ‘walls of shame’.”
“These processes were not only time-consuming, but also offered no visibility around whether the individuals abusing frontline workers or stealing products were doing the same thing at another store.
“Repeat offenders have always thrived in that anonymity.”
Thomson concluded: “Using technology to work together through sharing information about crime and collaborating directly with law enforcement is the key to making stores safer at scale.”
Reducing violence with Auror
According to the company, retailers have connected more than two million dots globally through Auror.
It has helped the world’s largest retailers reduce violent retail crime in their stores as a result of intelligence surfaced through dot connections.
One of the largest American supermarket chains reduced violent retail crime across their store network last year by 12%, while a national UK retailer reported a 26% drop in violent behaviour towards their staff.
“More coordinated than the offenders themselves”
Dr Cory Lowe Director of Research for the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) explained: “Controlling organised retail crime requires retailers and law enforcement to be more coordinated than the offenders themselves.
“Decades of research shows a minority of offenders drives the majority of harm.”
Lowe concluded: “When retailers can link incidents across locations, investigators can identify patterns, prioritise high-impact offenders and build stronger cases, ultimately improving outcomes and holding serious, repeat offenders accountable.”