published_or_final_version / abstract / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Shoplifting proliferated in eighteenth-century England with retail expansion, acquiring a new prominence as it was made a capital crime. This study comprehensively examines this phenomenon, seating it within the historiographies of crime, marketing and consumption. The majority of offenders were occasional thieves, drawn from some of the most economically vulnerable sectors of plebeian communities, their profile confirming the significance of age and gender. While specialist shops were shoplifters' primary target, particularly those selling textiles and clothing, a spatial analysis suggests that thieves preferred smaller, local shops to their more prestigious counterparts. Shoplifters matched their tactics to the size and status of shop, using performance as a tool to achieve their ends. Yet the study questions assumptions around the influence of fashion and consumer desire on shop theft, discussing how the type and quantity of goods stolen points to more complex economic motives, both financial and social. The potential impact of the crime on women's role as shopkeepers and the tendency to sexualise female offenders are also scrutinised. While retailers were initially instrumental in driving legislative change and worked constructively with magistrates to control the crime's incidence, their constant reluctance to prosecute conveys a false impression of the crime's true extent. The study calculates prevalence, and projects the financial impact of shoplifting on its victims at a time of highly competitive retailing. 'Risk-based' in their thinking, retailers developed practical means of protecting their stores, while new marketing techniques proved variously a boon and handicap. Yet shopkeepers' reactions were not uniform, some apparently preferring such situational prevention, while others turned more readily to the law. This ambivalence was also exhibited in their engagement with the capital law reform that ultimately saw the repeal of the Shoplifting Act. Employing a variety of sources from court transcripts to literature, the study finally explores how changing social perspectives on crime during the period coloured public attitudes to shoplifting, foreshadowing reconfigured nineteenth-century perceptions of the crime.

Adolescent shoplifting has provoked limited and somewhat controversial perspectives within the sociological and psychological literature. These controversies center around the empirical variables used for analysis. A companion argument focuses on the subjective and objective measurement of these variables. This research explicated variables from the sociological literature to test their relationship, using multiple linear regression, to adolescent shoplifting behavior. These variables and situational stimuli were operationalized in a simultaneous model to demonstrate a proximate occurrence of the attitude-situation-behavior reciprocal. This reciprocal is a learning theory which suggests that direct and vicarious experiences accompanied by rewards and punishment, in one's environment, lead to the acquisition of specific beliefs, attitudes and behavior toward a situation. This research contends that beliefs and attitudes toward the situation, rather than the bonding, peer association and other factors, shape adolescent shoplifting behavior. The situational stimuli variables were perceived empirically as being the major reciprocal element that maximized and/or minimized the adolescent's attitude toward shoplifting. The reciprocals are expressed as: SF = f(B, PA, PA, PR, N, N, ATT, S, Age, Race). An anonymous self-report questionnaire was administered to N = 312 Portland adolescents ranging in ages between 13 and 17. These youths were sampled at various neighborhood youths service centers, mall stores and Fred Meyer. The S-R elicited the youths' perceptions and attitudes to the explicated dimensions of the variables. The research results confirmed the situational stimuli correlate for adolescent 'snitch' shoplifting. Statistical results validate the progressive involvement and drift propositions

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(医学) / 乙第13385号 / 論医博第2217号 / 新制||医||1048(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 古川 壽亮, 教授 松村 由美, 教授 中山 健夫 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Bakgrund: Butiksstölder är ett utbrett samhällsproblem som drabbar många butiker inom detaljhandeln. Butikscheferna behöver hantera detta på något sätt i deras ledarskap. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka berättelser butikschefer förmedlar om sitt ledarskap avseende stöld, samt hur ledarskapet kan bidra till att förebygga butiksstölder. Frågeställningarna är 1) Vilka berättelser förmedlar butikschefer om sitt ledarskap avseende butiksstölder? samt 2) Hur kan ledarskapet bidra till att förebygga och förhindra butiksstölder? Teori: Den teoretiska referensramen innehåller tidigare forskning om ledarskap, tidigare forskning om butikschefer samt tidigare forskning om externa butiksstölder. Metod: Undersökningen genomfördes med kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer utifrån ett urval på sju butikschefer inom dagligvaruhandeln. Intervjuerna har varit fokuserade på butikschefers berättelser om butiksstölder, för att ta reda på hur de arbetar för att förhindra stölder samt vad som är viktigast för att förhindra stölder. Resultat: Butikscheferna förmedlade berättelser om att försöka förebygga och förhindra butiksstölder. I berättelserna framkom arbetsmetoder som säkerhet, bedömning och proaktiva tillvägagångssätt. Det framkom också ledarskap och lärande som handlar om kompetens och värderingar. Resultatet visar att kunskap om konsumentbeteende är av stor vikt för att förhindra butiksstölder. Resultatet visar också att butikschefers värderingar av det stöldförebyggande arbetet skiljer sig åt, samt att värderingar kan vara kopplade till ett mer lärande ledarskap. Slutsats: Slutsatsen är att butikschefer kan bidra till att förhindra stölder genom proaktiva tillvägagångssätt samt genom att ha kompetenta medarbetare med god kunskap om konsumentbeteende. Butikschefen präglar sannolikt medarbetarna med sina värderingar och signalerar därmed hur viktigt eller oviktigt det är att förhindra butiksstölder. / Background: Shoplifting is a widespread social problem that affects many stores in retail. The store managers need to manage these problems from their leadership. Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate which stories store managers mediate about their leadership about shoplifting, and how the leadership can contribute to prevent shoplifting. The research questions are 1) Which stories do store managers mediate about their leadership regarding shoplifting? 2) How can leadership contribute to prevent shoplifting? Theory: The theoretical framework includes previous research about leadership, previous research about store managers and previous research about shoplifting. Method: The research has been completed with qualitative semi-structured interviews from a selection with seven store managers within retail. The interviews have been focused on store managers' stories of shoplifting, to find out how they work to prevent shoplifting and what is most important to prevent. Results: The store managers mediated stories about trying to prevent shoplifting. The stories even showed working methods like safety, estimation and proactive approaches. The stories even appeared about leadership and learning, that is about competence and values. The results show that knowledge about consumer behavior is important to prevent shoplifting. The results also show that store managers' values about the work to prevent shoplifting is different, and values can be connected to a learning leadership. Conclusion: The conclusion is that store managers can contribute to prevent shoplifting within proactive approaches and have competent employees with knowledge about consumer behavior. The store manager probably influences the employees with their values and signals if preventing work is important.

This research is a exploratory and descriptive study based on juvenile's perceptions with regard to shop theft. Secondary data sources were consulted to supplement the empirical data collected by means of a comprehensive questionnaire. Five hundred learners from grades 10, 11 and 12 in Mabopane were selected for the completion of the questionnaires. Shop theft was further elucidated by the application of criminological theories to explain research findings by highlighting their relationship with shop theft. Main research findings established that there are significant statistical differences with regard to the learner gender, age and grade as far as their views on shop theft were concerned. Recommendations based on the findings include teaching Criminology at secondary schools, the development of an anti shop theft youth oriented crime prevention program, shop theft educational and awareness programmes, and shoplifter offender prevention programs. / Criminology / M.A. (Criminology)

This research is a exploratory and descriptive study based on juvenile's perceptions with regard to shop theft. Secondary data sources were consulted to supplement the empirical data collected by means of a comprehensive questionnaire. Five hundred learners from grades 10, 11 and 12 in Mabopane were selected for the completion of the questionnaires. Shop theft was further elucidated by the application of criminological theories to explain research findings by highlighting their relationship with shop theft. Main research findings established that there are significant statistical differences with regard to the learner gender, age and grade as far as their views on shop theft were concerned. Recommendations based on the findings include teaching Criminology at secondary schools, the development of an anti shop theft youth oriented crime prevention program, shop theft educational and awareness programmes, and shoplifter offender prevention programs. / Criminology and Security Science / M.A. (Criminology)

<p dir="ltr">his research investigates the detection of pre-crime events, specifically targeting behaviors indicative of shoplifting, through the advanced analysis of CCTV video data. The study introduces an innovative approach that leverages augmented human pose and emotion information within individual frames, combined with the extraction of activity information across subsequent frames, to enhance the identification of potential shoplifting actions before they occur. Utilizing a diverse set of models including 3D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and a specially developed transformer architecture, the research systematically explores the impact of integrating additional contextual information into video analysis.</p><p dir="ltr">By augmenting frame-level video data with detailed pose and emotion insights, and focusing on the temporal dynamics between frames, our methodology aims to capture the nuanced behavioral patterns that precede shoplifting events. The comprehensive experimental evaluation of our models across different configurations reveals a significant improvement in the accuracy of pre-crime detection. The findings underscore the crucial role of combining visual features with augmented data and the importance of analyzing activity patterns over time for a deeper understanding of pre-shoplifting behaviors.</p><p dir="ltr">The study’s contributions are multifaceted, including a detailed examination of pre-crime frames, strategic augmentation of video data with added contextual information, the creation of a novel transformer architecture customized for pre-crime analysis, and an extensive evaluation of various computational models to improve predictive accuracy.</p>