England's shoplifting problem and the prolific offenders fuelling it

England’s shoplifting crisis and the prolific offenders driving it

Prolific shoplifters need to “know that they are going to be punished,” the policing minister has said.

At the peak of his offending, Jeff Ashman says he was leaving shops with goods worth £400 to £500 every day.

“It’s mind-boggling,” he said, describing the amount he stole from stores in Hastings to feed his heroin and crack cocaine addiction.

“I know the misery and grief and despair that I have caused these people for a long period of time.”

Shoplifting is now behind Ashman, but prolific offenders like him continue to affect communities across England.

We asked police about the 10 suspects each force had most frequently linked to shoplifting offences between 2020-21 and 2025-26.

The response showed that 28,415 recorded offences were linked to just 270 suspects by the 27 forces that shared data with us.

That works out at an average of 105 offences per person - and that only includes cases where a theft was formally reported to police and officers identified a suspect.

Among those identified was one suspect in Sussex who had been linked to 247 shoplifting offences, the equivalent of a reported crime every 10 days.

Policing minister Sarah Jones said shoplifting was a “pernicious crime that for too long has gone unpunished”.

She said: “They need to know that they are going to be punished for what they have done.”

Official figures show police forces across England and Wales, excluding the British Transport Police, recorded 502,011 shoplifting offences in 2025-26 alone.

More than half of those cases were closed without a suspect being identified.

The government says it is looking at other ways to tackle prolific shoplifting, alongside prison sentences and drug treatment, including technology or court orders that would stop offenders visiting certain shops or areas.

Back in Hastings, Ashman was brought face to face with a man he once called his “public enemy number one”.

John Bownas leads a team that supports shops in the seaside town, including working together to cut crime.

“You and this town and shoplifting,” Bownas told him, “it’s a bit of a history.”

John Bownas (left) told Jeff he had “often succeeded” in staying one step ahead of them, but “we got you in the end”

Bownas still sees the effect of shoplifting on local businesses and their staff.

“It’s a frustration that the system is letting so many people down,” he said. “What that ends up with is young members of staff who are just paid minimum wage to put a few things on the shelf faced with quite often really quite violent characters.

“There are threats of needles and threats of knives and that’s not what a young shopworker should be faced with day in day out.”

The Home Office has made assault on a retail worker in England and Wales a specific criminal offence through the Crime and Policing Act 2026.

Those convicted can face up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine.

One shop manager in Canterbury said it was “really upsetting” to see her staff attacked by shoplifters.

Laurissa Woolgar said: “My colleagues have been wrestled with as they’ve tried to get items off [them]. We’ve been sworn at, there’s a lot of verbal abuse.”

While tougher laws may make some people think twice, the ability to catch and prosecute violent shoplifters will also be important.

About one in five shoplifting offences in 2025-26 led to a charge or summons, with 285,667 reported crimes still open or closed without any action.

Some retailers told the BBC they had to identify suspects themselves to secure an arrest.

That happened when shoplifters stole gold jewellery worth £1,000 from Dion Smith’s workshop last year.

He has run the business in Leeds for 16 years and said shoplifting has “got out of control” over the past five to 10 years.

His wife took photos of the shoplifters selling their stolen goods in a second-hand shop, but police could not identify them until the business owners posted the images on social media.

“We had so many comments and people messaging us telling us they knew who they were and where they lived,” Smith said.

After the shoplifters were identified on social media, Dion Smith said police helped recover the stolen goods and made arrests.

Smith added: “There has to be consequences; we’ve got to come up with something to deter them because at the moment they’re being given a green light to do whatever they want; they are running amok.”

Emmeline Taylor, professor of criminology at City St George’s University in London, said shoplifting is also being fuelled by organised crime.

“Post-pandemic, we have seen what’s been described as a shoplifting epidemic on the streets of the UK,” she said.

“What we are seeing is organised criminals stealing very specific items, clearing entire shelves and selling that on to other markets, maybe online, maybe at car boot sales,” she explained.

“But we also have prolific local offenders, these individuals maybe drug affected, they already know where they’re going to sell the goods on.”

Professor Emmeline Taylor said shoplifting remains relatively high despite a slight year-on-year fall in 2025-26

Specialist police unit Opal set up an organised retail crime team two years ago, which often works across multiple force areas.

Jim Taylor, a former detective chief superintendent who previously led the unit, says this helps them connect organised crime gangs to offending across the country.

“There are individuals exploiting the lack of coordination between stores, between police forces and making vast sums of money,” he said.

One case stretched across 30 different forces, and the unit has uncovered crime groups responsible for “millions of pounds of theft”.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said a strategy launched last year has delivered “real results” by bringing together policing, retailers and the government.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss, NPCC lead for retail crime, added that “tackling retail crime cannot be achieved by policing alone”.

The strategy is designed to target organised retail crime, roll out an offender management programme and put preventative measures in place.

One example is a new crime intelligence platform called Auror, which lets retailers report directly to police to help tackle prolific shoplifting.

Hertfordshire Constabulary, one of three forces now using Auror, was able to arrest two shoplifters at a retail park in Stevenage thanks to the system.

The men were linked to dozens of thefts from Boots stores across the country.

Similar information-sharing is central to the work of Partnerships Against Business Crime in Staffordshire, which gives registered retailers updates on known offenders.

Paul Greenhough, who manages the scheme, said: “I think unfortunately it has become partly accepted that stores are going to lose things.

“For us, it’s about saying, ‘No, that’s not acceptable - we need to do something about it’.”

From the government’s point of view, Jones said a slight year-on-year fall in recorded shoplifting offences showed the country had “turned that corner”.

But she added: “We all know there is a lot further that we need to go and a lot more we need to do.”