Introduction

The nature, scale and cost of crimes against retailers and other businesses can be hard to quantify. This, and the fact that such crimes may appear impersonal or ‘victimless’, can make it tempting to downplay the effects of business and retail crime. 

However, we know that businesses are at greater risk of crime than domestic households. The risk of repeat incidents, and the costs of incidents, are also greater for businesses than for private households. Far from being ‘victimless’, the effects of retail and other business crime are widely felt, on employers and employees, on customers and on the wider community. Crime affects profitability, deters investment and can hasten business closure. It causes distress for staff, saps morale and affects staff turnover. It puts up prices: in what is likely to be a conservative estimate the British Retail Consortium suggests that retail crime costs every household in the UK an extra £90 each year on their shopping bills. It also limits choice: work by the Social Exclusion Unit has highlighted the impact of crime against small shops in reducing shopping access in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. All these factors – the scale of commercial crime, its cost and wider implications – mean that reducing business and retail crime will be a priority in many local areas. 

The Business & Retail Crime Toolkit is designed to provide Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, retail partnerships and others with tools and information to:

• help reduce business and retail crime

• develop effective solutions to local problems

• support the development of good practice and promising initiatives

The Toolkit brings together in one place information and advice about practical measures that can be adopted at a local level to identify, tackle, reduce and prevent Business Crime.

It provides information on the latest developments, research findings, funding opportunities and promising approaches to tackling business crime.

Checklists for identifying problems, developing responses and monitoring progress at a local level are also contained in the Toolkit.

This comprehensive Toolkit provides a way of sharing experience and ideas between local practitioners. It signposts a range of interventions currently being undertaken by Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships. Case summaries are detailed and contacts listed. The Toolkit also lists a wide range of useful publications.

Successive sections of the toolkit highlight the importance of:

• Targeting interventions on the businesses most at risk of crime

• Prompt action to reduce the risk of repeat victimisation

• Combining situational crime prevention measures with action to reduce offending behaviour, for example through programmes to reduce young peoples’ involvement in shop theft and work with offenders.

• ‘Joining up’ economic development and crime reduction agendas.

• Making the economic case for business involvement and action.

The effectiveness of the Toolkits relies on your help. We very much welcome contributions and advice on how to improve their content and their approach. There are details on how you can help at ‘Innovation’.