To Catch A Shoplifter

Once upon a time, Michele Van Ryn believed shoplifting to be an act only those under teenage peer pressure or those struggling to make ends meet would perform. She was wrong. Shoplifting truly knows no bounds—but who shoplifts, and why? In To Catch a Shoplifter, Michele lifts the curtain on twenty years of working a job with many names: retail investigator, floorwalker, secret shopper. What she presents is people with a wide variety of backgrounds, motivations, and strategies, sacrificing absurd things just to save a little bit of cash. Whether people shoplifted because they thought they could get away with it or because they needed to scrape by, Michele has caught them all. Join her as she tells over fifty funny, mindboggling, and sometimes heartbreaking stories of apprehending shoplifters.

Explores the reasons why people shoplift, its addictive nature, the ramifications of getting caught, and where to get help stopping a shoplifting problem.

A history of shoplifting, revealing the roots of our modern dilemma. Rachel Shteir's The Steal is the first serious study of shoplifting, tracking the fascinating history of this ancient crime. Dismissed by academia and the mainstream media and largely misunderstood, shoplifting has become the territory of moralists, mischievous teenagers, tabloid television, and self-help gurus. But shoplifting incurs remarkable real-life costs for retailers and consumers. The "crime tax"-the amount every American family loses to shoplifting-related price inflation-is more than $400 a year. Shoplifting cost American retailers $11.7 billion in 2009. The theft of one $5.00 item from Whole Foods can require sales of hundreds of dollars to break even. The Steal begins when shoplifting entered the modern record as urbanization and consumerism made London into Europe's busiest mercantile capital. Crossing the channel to nineteenth-century Paris, Shteir tracks the rise of the department store and the pathologizing of shoplifting as kleptomania. In 1960s America, shoplifting becomes a symbol of resistance when the publication of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book popularizes shoplifting as an antiestablishment act. Some contemporary analysts see our current epidemic as a response to a culture of hyper-consumerism; others question whether its upticks can be tied to economic downturns at all. Few provide convincing theories about why it goes up or down. Just as experts can't agree on why people shoplift, they can't agree on how to stop it. Shoplifting has been punished by death, discouraged by shame tactics, and protected against by high-tech surveillance. Shoplifters have been treated by psychoanalysis, medicated with pharmaceuticals, and enforced by law to attend rehabilitation groups. While a few individuals have abandoned their sticky-fingered habits, shoplifting shows no signs of slowing. In The Steal, Shteir guides us through a remarkable tour of all things shoplifting-we visit the Woodbury Commons Outlet Mall, where boosters run rampant, watch the surveillance footage from Winona Ryder's famed shopping trip, and learn the history of antitheft technology. A groundbreaking study, The Steal shows us that shoplifting in its many guises-crime, disease, protest-is best understood as a reflection of our society, ourselves.

Steal this book

Shoplifiting is the single largest crime impacting U.S. retail merchants with annual losses over $21 billion and with merchants spending hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent it. To add insult to injury, individuals apprehended for shoplifting may sue stores for damages resulting from their apprehension and detention—and sometimes win. There is good news though. States have enacted merchant protection statutes and civil recovery laws which allow retailers to deal more effectively with the problem. Merchant protection statutes give retail merchants the right to apprehend and detain individuals suspected of shoplifting, while enjoying a conditional privilege of civil liability immunity; yet, despite the offer of civil liability immunity, merchants still lose civil suits with alarming regularity. To avoid losses, merchants must know and follow the specifics of their state's statutes to enjoy the immunity. Well-written with numerous real life experiences and sound advice, Budden's book will help retail store executives better understand shoplifting's enormous financial hazards to their businesses. Budden uses real life cases to show what executives and managers can and cannot do in their efforts to apprehend, detain, and prosecute shoplifters. They will also find up-to-date advice on using civil recovery laws and information about what is being done to make shoplifters pay for their crimes. Budden makes clear that to gain maximum benefit from both merchant protection statutes and civil recovery laws, retail store executives must understand how such legal measures work and how best to apply them to reduce inventory shrinkage. These retail professionals will find Budden's book a useful guide for developing their own safe, workable protection plans.

Shoplifting is a practice that has been engaged in for centuries, but it was only after the Civil War that the prevalence of shoplifting and societal awareness of it, became significant. In the 1860s the typical shoplifter was from the lower classes; by 1900 it was an upper-class woman who shoplifted from a huge department store "because" she was a "kleptomaniac", and in the 1960s it was teenagers stealing for kicks. Shoplifting: A Social History looks at the activity of shoplifting for the last 140 years: the types of people singled out as the principal offenders, retailers' ambivalent responses to the activity, selective prosecution, the utilization of high-tech antitheft devices, and suing shoplifters to recover costs. Also examined are media accounts which have often used exaggerated numbers when discussing the activity and the effect of private justice on the offense. Discrepancies in treatment of lower-class women versus "respectable" women shoplifters will be of interest to women's studies scholars.

FTW SELF DEFENSE FTW Self Defense is a revolutionary text which addresses, in great detail, many important yet controversial topics which most instructors do not discuss with their students. Th is is the reality of self defense, and these topics are not entered into lightly. Intended for mature and open minded students only. This is the long awaited companion volume to the underground bestseller Hardcore Self Defense.

From a leading Yale expert and serial entrepreneur, a radical, principled, and field-tested approach that identifies what’s really at stake in any negotiation and ensures you get your half—so you can focus on growing the pie. Negotiations are incredibly stressful and can bring out the worst in people. Wouldn’t it be better if there were a principled way to negotiate? Wouldn’t it be even better if there were a way to treat people fairly and get treated fairly in a negotiation? Split the Pie offers a new approach that does both—a field-tested method that reframes how negotiations play out. Barry Nalebuff, a professor at Yale School of Management, helps identify what’s really at stake in a negotiation: the “pie.” The negotiation pie is the additional value created through an agreement to work together. Seeing the relevant pie will change how you think about fairness and power in negotiation. You’ll learn how to get half the value you create, no matter your size. Filled with examples and in-depth case studies, Split the Pie is a practical and theory-based approach to negotiation. You’ll see how it helped reframe a high-stakes negotiation when Coca-Cola purchased Honest Tea, a company Barry cofounded with his former student Seth Goldman. The pie framework also works for everyday negotiations. You’ll learn how to deploy logic to determine truly equitable solutions and employ empathy to expand the pie and sell your solution. Split the Pie allows both sides to focus their energy on making the biggest possible pie—to have your pie and eat it too.