Mess with Greggs at your peril. The bakery chain is a beloved British institution: in recent years, it has even successfully sold out a clothing collaboration with Primark. (“By wearing its logo, you’re sticking two fingers up at food and fashion snobbery,” a branding expert told The Guardian at the time.)
Back in 2012, sitting Chancellor George Osborne never expected that a proposal to simplify tax treatment of takeaways would become the memorable controversy of his Budget. Osborne proposed to raise VAT on baked goods “specifically sold for consumption whilst still hot”, while giving a pass to those sold for consumption at home.
He’d reckoned without the British public’s love of sausage rolls and Cornish pasties. Greggs, with the West Cornwall Pasty Company, mobilised its fans to protest this “pasty tax”, its press release painting a dire picture of Greggs workers cast out onto the streets as outlets would be forced to close. The tax was abandoned. Steak Bakes 1, Osborne 0.
Now, Greggs is appealing to the goodness of the British people as it faces a new crisis: rampant shoplifting of the brand’s sandwiches. In a much-trailed story, the bakery chain announced that it would be placing sandwiches behind the counter in some outlets, rather than allowing customers to pick up goods directly from refrigerators. It is a trial response to rampant shoplifting.
This story inspired national soul-searching on social media. Does it mark a new low in British morality? Stealing from Greggs is a bit like stealing from granny – the resort of rogues and scoundrels. Or is it a mark of the desperation faced by the poorest among us? Softer hearts blame the exceptional cost of living, and our rising inequality – why else would anyone need to shoplift a ham and cheese baguette?
Yet look behind the headlines, and it becomes clear this isn’t a story about desperate mothers shoplifting to fill lunchboxes – or even a story about Greggs at all.
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Crime trackers across consumer sectors show a marked increase in retail theft in the years since Covid. The view of the retailers? Whether sapphires or sausage rolls, people shoplift because they can. Why do they feel they can? Because the police have never been less likely to pursue crime. If the perpetrator is known to be under 18, or the theft is valued at less than £200, you can forget consequences.
Most readers will have a story about how they or a loved one have been robbed in recent years, only to find little support from the police. Last December, this paper reported on the familiar phenomenon of crime victims tracking the location of their valuables using AirTags or apps like Find My iPhone – only to find the police lack the basic resources to reclaim such stolen goods. Whether it’s police apathy or simply a lack of time and manpower, retailers are on the sharp end of the same frustrating experience.
This January, the British Retail Consortium released a major report into rising crime on the high street. Of the retailers they represent, 61 per cent rated the police response to crime as poor or very poor. If that sounds subjective, try another fact: of all reported violent incidents, only 10 per cent resulted in police even attending the scene. Only 2 per cent resulted in a conviction.
Back in the 1980s, right-wing politicians in America popularised the idea of “broken-window” policing: the theory that every crime, no matter how minor, must be taken seriously in order to prevent broader social decay. “Disorderly conditions and behaviours left untended in a community are signs that nobody cares and lead to fear of crime, more serious crime and urban decay,” wrote academics George Kelling and James Q Wilson.
In other words, when Britain lets teenagers shoplift from Greggs, we get more robberies at the Apple Store. Tony Blair was much pilloried by the left when he adopted these principles in government – hence the introduction of Asbos. But Starmer should look to him.
Critics of “broken-window” policing today like to point out two truisms. Firstly, our prison system is as broken as our crime squads: there’s no point handing out more custodial sentences if there’s nowhere to house more prisoners. Secondly, our police forces are already buckling under the combined pressure to combat cybercrime, pursue ever-changing political priorities, and reform their own scandal-ridden structures.
All this is true. Who wants to hand more power to police forces that have recently produced monsters like Wayne Couzins and David Carrick? Yet it doesn’t change the problem that something is fundamentally broken on the British high street. On my own local shopping street, a row of shops has taken to letting customers in one by one after pressing a bell, following a major robbery without police consequences.
The British Retail Consortium is supporting a campaign to make a crime of violence or abuse against a shop worker a standalone offence. The new Crime and Policing Bill, which has passed its second reading, will introduce a six-month maximum penalty. The deeper issues, however, are as much about police response as they are custodial sentences.
Not everyone needs to be sent to jail for shoplifting. But whether they steal from Greggs or from Graff Diamonds, thieves should know that the police will be on their scent.
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