@catahoula:
No, an honest, non desperate person likely won’t steal if they aren’t being watched, but honesty comes in levels of gray, too. Someone can be an honest person, yet occassionally will cheat on their taxes, if they think they can get away with it. People are supposed to report out of state purchases they have made and pay the local sales tax, but few people do.
The other factor is economics, most people who have the means will not steal, pure and simple, so my local walmart has very little shoplifting problems from what I can tell.
But if the Walmart is in a marginal area, where there is a lot of economic hardship, where there are problems with drug abuse, unemployement, you name it, then it becomes a lot easier for even an otherwise honest person to steal. Junkies looking for a fix, someone looking for cash to feed their kid, when you are in an economically depressed area the pressures to shoplift are much greater…and if there is no a visible presence there, even if 90% of shoplifters get caught, it won’t be the deterrent if people know there are store employees visibly watching the store. If you go into the electronics section (for stuff that is not locked away) and there is an employee there, other than a hard core, I don’t give a crap type is going to hesitate, whereas if the coast looks clear, they will go beyond temptation and take it. A well staffed store with heavy floor traffic is going to deter shoplifting a lot more than a store that has few employees visible, low foot traffic and otherwise looks like a rundown wreck.
BTW, my use of the police analogy was not about Walmart stores having cops there (even if the cops routinely there are to arrest people, they don’t exactly walk around the store patrolling), I was talking about deterring crime in neigborhoods by having cops present and visible, that though crime still goes on, it is a lot less likely to occur if the cops are actively in the area, monitoring it and people know it, the hard core cases won’t care, but the stupid kids, the on the fence person, will see the cops and be deterred, same with store personnel.
Walmart doesn’t go into marginal areas out fo the goodness of their heart, they go there because marginal areas often have little to no competition (put it this way, within a couple of mile area of the Walmarts where I live, there are a ton of stores at various levels; in some areas, there isn’t another store like Walmart for 50 miles or more). However, treating a marginal area like we are talking about as if it is the same as being in a more affluent area is dumb, and what Walmart is likely doing is leaving that to the local town to deal with, and as others and I have pointed out,a store with lax security and lack of presence of employees is going to be a magnet for crime and it is left up to the town to pick up the pieces, which likely is struggling as it is. Even if let’s say Walmart through local sales taxes and property taxes is returning more to the communityh then they cost in extra police work, they would be returning a lot more net if the local town didn’t have to act as security as much, and in a struggling community that extra tax revenue is likely needed.
And yes, there are different kids of drug abusers and users. Heroin and Meth use in a down at the heels area has a very different profile then if it is in an affluent one, often heroin use and oxy use and meth use is by people who can afford to buy the drugs, local high schools in some areas that are known for top notch schools are having a lot of problems with drugs, because the kids can afford it, they aren’t shoplifting or mugging people to pay for their drugs, they basically get it from mom and dad …
