$20, same as downtown

Why CVS and Target Locking Up Products Is Backfiring - Bloomberg

None of that larceny is going to be thwarted by turning stores into plexiglass wastelands. But for the segment of theft happening off shelves, is putting products behind barriers an effective prevention measure? Although actual data is scarce, the answer seems to be yes. But that yes comes with significant caveats. Locking up merchandise “does work in the sense that it reduces theft” in the most basic way possible, says GlobalData’s Saunders. “The problem is it also reduces sales.”

I found this to be a really well-reported and balanced piece on the (growing) practice of locking up products by retailers.

This is something we always struggled with at our store. We were required by state law to have spray paint either behind a counter or in locked cases, but everything we did beyond that was prompted by our own experience. Paint markers were locked up or behind our counter. Expensive sets were behind our counter. We had a line of oil paint in stick form (“pigment sticks”) that were locked up. We came close to putting doors on an expensive line of oil paints.

We were a small business so we didn’t have great numbers on shoplifting. The monetary value of what was stolen was not a significant factor in our closing, but having to worry about it and manage it absolutely was. Arguing with customers about whether they had to leave their bag at our counter, or whether someone was “following them around,” is awful. Sometimes we caught shoplifters red-handed and had to worry about how they would react when they were confronted. I was threatened with a gun once, and we had several physical altercations over the years. Sometimes we noticed an item was missing after the fact and were able to pull video footage of it being stolen by a frequent customer. It was all soul-crushing, in aggregate.

So much of society just feels totally unsustainable right now, so put this down as one part of it.