Inside America’s Shoplifting Lab
July 15, 2026 at 04:30PMHave you ever entered a grocery store only to spot yourself on a ceiling-mounted TV screen, above the words “Recording In Progress”? That’s the work of Dr. Read Hayes, executive director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, “America’s leading lab to prevent shoplifting.” For Slate, Alexander Sammon heads to LPRC headquarters to tour a painstakingly protected store simulation, and then to a local Walmart to test his shoplifting knowledge. (He also sifts through nebulous stats on America’s “organized retail crime” epidemic, taking clear delight in the relative haziness of the country’s “shrink” problem.) Sammon’s dispatch is a scrappy, wry study of the loss-prevention industry, a font of wild shoplifting trivia, and a good critique of corporate suspicion. (And if you’ve already read your share of free Slate pieces, you might even consider paying for it.)
Not only are retailers losing money and goods; they are losing hearts and minds. Writer Jia Tolentino and streamer Hasan Piker got on a New York Times podcast and celebrated the allure of “microlooting,” another coinage. A major Hollywood film about shoplifters recently debuted. Its name? I Love Boosters. Love! In the annals of TikTok are countless videos of people shoplifting, doing “flash robs” and smash-and-grabs and ripping off the returns department. From the comments: “No different from what the Corp and big business do to us. LOL No difference.” Numerous people I spoke to about this article confessed readily to shoplifting—particularly from the self-checkout at Whole Foods. There is no shame. . . . But you don’t need hearts and minds when you have vanguard technologies of social control and surveillance to fight the epidemic of shrink.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/07/15/america-shoplifting-epidemic-loss-prevention-shrink/
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