I was in Leeds attending a conference about reducing the impact of crime — ironic for what was about to happen. I stopped at Tesco to buy some food for the train ride home. While I was there, I witnessed a man take two bottles of wine and walk out without paying.
I knew exactly what was happening. And I did nothing. My first reaction was anger.
- Anger at the security guard, who seemed more interested in his phone.
- Anger at the man for stealing.
- Anger at Tesco for apparently making it so easy.
- Anger at society for whatever combination of circumstances had brought this man to this moment.
- Anger at my fellow shoppers for doing nothing.
Mostly anger at myself, because I had done nothing either. There is a famous quotation, from John Stuart Mill in 1867:
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
Well, I looked on. Why? Because in that split second I made a completely rational calculation. Personal safety — what if he had a knife? My train — I didn't want to miss it and spend another £80 on a new ticket. The police — would I have to wait around, give a statement, receive calls afterwards or potentially give evidence? All for two bottles of wine? I decided it wasn't worth it. Apparently I am far from alone.
Research for the British Retail Consortium (BRC) found that almost one in four people in the UK had witnessed shoplifting in the previous 12 months — equivalent to more than 16 million of us. So I had just become one of the 25%.
I did some research on the train ride. The scale of this problem is extraordinary. The BRC estimated more than 20 million incidents of customer theft across UK retail in 2023/24 — around 55,000 every day, costing retailers £2.2 billion. Yet police-recorded shoplifting is measured in the hundreds of thousands, not tens of millions.
The datasets aren't directly comparable, but the gap tells us something important: an enormous amount of shop theft never reaches the security guard, let alone the criminal justice system. And perhaps my experience helps explain why. Most of us appear to have come to the same conclusion as I did — engaging isn't worth it.
Employees worry about being assaulted. Shoppers worry about their safety. Witnesses worry about the inconvenience of becoming involved. Businesses make their own calculations about whether reporting is worth the effort. Everyone behaves rationally. Collectively we create something irrational: an environment in which stealing has become easier than challenging stealing.
I thought about that as I tapped my card. How much of what I was paying was ultimately compensating for what somebody else hadn't paid for? Crime doesn't come without a cost simply because nobody intervenes. Somebody always pays.
Then, as I left the shop, I noticed a beggar sitting beside the doorway. And it struck me that he might have been the only completely honest actor in the entire story. He wasn't stealing. He wasn't pretending not to notice. He wasn't looking the other way. He was simply asking people for money. Whether we gave him anything was our choice.
I walked to the station thinking about Mill's words. Perhaps the challenge isn't simply persuading good people to do something.
It's creating a system in which doing something feels worth it.