No one person or company can do it all by themselves. And loss prevention or asset protection is no exception. LP professionals must plan for and combat internal and external theft and fraud, gross negligence, unintentional loss and shrinkage, computer attacks, travel and shipping crimes, natural and manmade disasters, injuries, and a host of other contingencies. To do it right means being cutting-edge. Like physicians, LP leaders need to be up-to-date on understanding crime and loss causal mechanisms (how stuff really happens), as well as the latest scientific and financial evidence on preventive measures.

Fortunately this magazine and others, as well as associations like the Food Marketing Institute, Retail Industry Leaders Association, National Retail Federation, Retail Council of Canada, and others, including local and regional organized retail crime gatherings, help retailers with common problems meet with their colleagues and solutions partners to share ideas and experiences. It was in that vein that ten leading retail LP senior executives formed the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) back in 2001. As you hopefully know by now, LPRC was designed by these visionary LP professionals to provide real-world innovation and scientific evidence to expand on anecdote and benchmarking.

The LPRC's board of advisors has structured the organization to support its members by sanctioning rigorous, but user-friendly research to be fed out to members in multiple formats.

Basecamp

All LPRC projects, committees, and working groups communicate and post images, video clips, reports, spreadsheets, and documents using their assigned virtual workspace on LPRC's project website called Basecamp.

Working Groups

A key way many LPRC members collaborate with each other on problems and solutions, while planning needed research, is through participating in standing working groups. These working groups are led by two retail members, and include multiple retailers alongside solutions providers, product manufacturers, and LPRC scientists and project managers.

Working groups are formed around a specific, critical asset protection need. The following four current groups are actively working their issues.

• Benefit Denial Working Group headed by Best Buy's Tim Fisher and Walmart's Dain Sutherland.
• Predictive Analytics Working Group headed by Sears Holdings' Carlos Bacelis and Big Lots' Kevin Wolfe.
• Video Analytics Working Group headed by Bloomindale's Fred Becker, Rite Aid's Bob Oberosler, and Big Lots' Richard Thompson.
• Packaging Innovation Working Group headed by OfficeMax's John Voytilla and Shannon Hunter along with Jeff Kellogg of MeadWestvaco.

Each working group sets its own mission statement, objectives, process, and resources, and holds regular

conference calls, meets at locations, uses its Basecamp virtual workspaces, and generally makes things happen via small pilot testing and by sanctioning broader research and development.

StoreLab

I've discussed LPRC's virtual innovation program called StoreLab in this column many times, but the program is designed to use working stores and DCs to closely examine, tweak, improve, test, and determine crime and loss control effort strengths and weaknesses. LPRC uses these sites across the U.S. to learn how things work and fail, how shoppers respond, how offenders perceive and react to single and multiple cues, plus how employees use and would improve efforts. We learn basic and advanced things in these "laboratory" sites, and prepare protective interventions for larger-scale evaluation.

Key StoreLab successes include the now widespread use of enhanced public-view monitors or ePVMS. LPRC started looking at moving PVMs into merchandise display areas approximately four years ago in our Gainesville, Florida, CVS/pharmacy StoreLab location. Based on feedback from offenders in that store and our Publix Super Market StoreLab store, we began to reduce PVM size to place it closer to high-loss items, and then add lighting and noises to help would-be offenders locate, identify, and "fear" this critical cue—hence these enhancements became known as ePVMs.

We have since conducted five collaborative, large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or field experiments with ePVMs, finding them both efficacious and cost-effective in each case. The shopper intercept data alongside employee and offender feedback provides members with credible, actionable white papers to secure funding and deployment support.

Research Projects

LPRC has conducted over sixty-five research projects over the last decade, but many of these have been highly collaborative with as many as eight retail chains involved, alongside multiple solutions providers and high-risk product vendors. Projects include:

• Learning what protective interventions most store managers would need to give them the confidence to openly display high-risk items and how offenders search for vulnerable areas;
• Whether ePVMs, safers/Keepers, enhanced CCTV domes, secure display fixtures, special peg hooks, and brightly-colored EAS tags are effective at controlling loss, to name just two.

Project grant funds have come from several foresighted companies, including Bacardi, Abbott Nutrition, Sears, SUPERVALU, CVS/pharmacy, Publix, Kroger, Advance Auto, and P&G, as well as technology and deployment support from solutions providers, including Alpha, CCI-Cam Connections, Clinton, FFR-DSI, InVue, Medeco, Retailers Advantage, and Rock-Tenn. Collaborative projects continue at LPRC.

Impact Workshop

LPRC has put out research findings and discussed implications at Impact conferences now for over six years, with the next one scheduled to be hosted by the University of Florida this coming October 15 – 17, 2012, in Gainesville. This year's workshop and conference promises even more collaboration via multiple breakout groups and interactive sessions and case studies.

Upcoming Action Groups

With so many retailers joining LPRC, the board of advisors voted recently to expand to add retailer action groups of like chains, including:

• Small-box specialty retailers like Kay Jewelers, Jared, T.J.Maxx, and Marshalls;
• Big-box merchants like Best Buy, Office Depot,
• Pep Boys, AutoZone, Advance Auto, Lowe's, Home Depot, Cabela's, and Dick's Sporting Goods;
• Department store chains like Sears, Kmart, Walmart, AAFES, and Bloomingdale's; and
• Supermarket/drug store retailers like Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, Publix, SUPERVALU, Kroger, and Wegmans.

These groups will tackle similar problems, while commissioning StoreLab innovation and rigorous field research alongside their many solutions partners.

Ongoing Collaboration

Making retailing safer and more profitable is a major undertaking requiring real research and a ton of collaboration. Fortunately retail publications, conferences, associations, and executives are stepping up to tie together problem solvers, alongside practitioners and solution developers. At LPRC we are striving to play a key support role to our members and the industry.

It all starts somewhere and somehow. Many, or maybe even most, crime attempts are spontaneous; they rarely involve much planning. But many crimes are planned, even if just a little. And often criminals and terrorists signal what they're up to as they plan and scout. We teach our students to use "pre-incident indicators" or PIIs to detect potential events, help solve crimes, and improve prevention efforts.

Pre-Incident Indicators

Pre-incident indicators can be described as observable or otherwise detectable anomalies or incidents (clues) that may precede a crime attempt or attack. PIIs may indicate planning, preparation, recruiting, communication, scouting, or mobilization activities. It's important to keep in mind, the observation of any one indicator may not, by itself, suggest a possible attack; contextual clusters of PIIs are better indicators. PIIs can help determine:

• A specific asset being targeted,
• The general or specific timing of a planned attack, and
• The attack method and tools to be used.

Following are examples of PIIs for both robbery and terrorism activities.

• Robbery—Individual makes one or more visits, drives slowly through the parking lot, is spotted concealed behind a dumpster, or loiters by the cash office.
• Terrorism—One or more subjects is seen taking photos; uses twitter or texting to report details, recruit, or otherwise communicate; is seen loitering near targets.

It is important for loss prevention teams to identify important clusters of PIIs that could indicate pre-planning, and then to pass these on to field teams. Most retailers prefer very suspicious and potentially violent situations be reported to the proper authorities rather than have store employees trying to take action.

We also teach our classes that post-crime investigations should include looking for signs of pre-strike scouting or set up, such as hiding spots or previously unknown communications or tool acquisition, since this helps identify serial crime situations. Further, knowing about PIIs helps LP departments plan PII detection programs and crime prevention actions.

Predatory Criminal Styles

Another important concept LP professionals should consider using with serial offenders and crimes is to learn how to profile offender hunting and attack styles. In a 2007 Journal of Family Violence article, criminologists Beauregard, Rossmo, and Proulx broke these styles down to aid criminal investigations and preventive programs alike.

Most offenders use some rationality as they search for, assess, and commit crimes. This rational choice perspective is what drives most crime prevention efforts, including our team's research and development projects. In the case of serial criminals, Beauregard and his coauthors recommend looking at these factors:

Offender and victim routine activities

• Choice of hunting ground
• Victim selection
• Method of approach
• Attack location choice
• Method to bring the victim to the crime site (if applicable)
• Crime location choice
• Method to commit the crime
• Victim release location choice (if applicable)

Based on this approach, the authors propose several main hunting styles:

• The Hunter—committed within an offender's city
• The Poacher—outside city or other than home base
• The Troller—opportunistic, encounters victims through routine activities
• The Trapper—potential victims come to them (such as child care centers)

And just as important, actual attack styles include:

• The Raptor—attacks almost immediately upon encountering
• The Stalker—follows, watches, waits for opportune moment
• The Ambusher—committed where the offender has a great deal of control

Theory vs. Practice

Why is this information important to loss prevention professionals? Commercial robbery, burglary, and booster groups; bad-check passers, diversion groups, fraudsters, rapists, abductors, child abusers, and murderers all regularly shop in retail stores, and many hunt and attack there. We recommend LP executives learn more about the whys and hows of these dangerous people to better protect customers and employees, and, hopefully, help law enforcement apprehend them.

The FBI released its final crime statistics for 2010 in September. The estimated number of violent crimes dropped about 6 percent as compared to 2009 estimates, to just under 1.25 million. This is the fourth consecutive annual decrease.

Each of the four violent crime types decreased year-over-year:

• Robberies dropped by 10 percent,
• Followed by forcible rapes down by 5 percent,
• Murder and non-negligent manslaughter down 4.2 percent, and
• Aggravated assault down 4.1 percent.
• Property crimes decreased by about 2.7 percent year-over-year to just over 9 million incidents, the eighth consecutive decline. Victims of property crimes, except for arson, lost an estimated $15.7 billion in 2010.

In the property crime category, each offense type also decreased:

• The largest decline of 7.4 percent was recorded in motor vehicle thefts. Some experts believe that electronic entry and security features on newer models have had a significant deterrent effect.
• Larcenies decreased by 2.4 percent.
• Burglaries decreased by 2 percent.

Overall, the FBI estimates that law enforcement agencies made about 13.1 million arrests, excluding traffic violations. The complete report is available on the FBI website at www.fbi.gov.

While internal and external thieves stole over $7 billion in 2010 from just twenty-three large retailers, the annual Hayes survey reported that total apprehensions and recoveries dropped for the first time in ten years. Mark R. Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International, the survey's author, added that "it appears the economy, fewer store employees, and less loss prevention staffing all played a role in these results."

Highlights from the report include the following items:

• Over 1 million total apprehensions for shoplifters and dishonest employees, but the total was 3.8 percent less than 2009.
• About 960,000 shoplifters were caught, which was down 4.1 percent from last year.
• Recoveries totaled $104 million, a decline of 4.7 percent over 2009. An additional $33 million was recovered from unapprehended shoplifters.
• About 69,000 dishonest employees were caught, a slight decrease of 0.4 percent over last year. But, only $44 million was recovered, which was a sharp drop of 12.7 percent.
• Shoplifting cases averaged $108.46, while internal cases averaged $639.99.
• For every $1.00 recovered by the surveyed companies, $38.46 went unrecovered.
• One of every 33.2 employees was apprehended for theft, which represents a total of 2.8 million employees.

The data was collected from a survey of twenty-three participating retail companies with over 19,000 stores and 2010 annual sales revenue of $632 billion.

Five years ago in this space, I reported on a revolutionary new application for RFID—eliminating liquor theft and sweethearting via over-pours or unauthorized free drinks in bars and restaurants. According to a recent article in RFID Journal, a variation of this technology is being used to facilitate "self-service" draft beer in a couple of Latino restaurants in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks to ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 RFID hardware, patrons are able to obtain an RFID-enabled card or wristband that allows them to help themselves to their drafts of choice. The card is linked to the patron's credit card, and enables up to 32 ounces of beer each. Instead of pouring, restaurant employees, known as pour tenders, provide the cards, explain how they work, and keep an eye out for over-consumption or unauthorized usage by minors.

Restaurant owner Jose Hevia says the "wall of beer" is especially popular with patrons waiting for a dinner table. DraftServe Technologies, the provider of the system, claims that the restaurant has more control over wastage from over-pours, and allows patrons to control how much they will drink. Really?

Loss prevention professionals are paid to make good decisions. And good choices come from good data. The LPRC was founded and is run by top retailers and their partners to help their teams make well-informed decisions using mixed research methods to innovate and evaluate highly effective diagnostic and prevention tools.

This column is designed to do the same thing—to provide further decision support via discussing the whys and hows of reducing crime and loss. As I've mentioned many times, LP and solutions managers should be absolute experts at diagnosing and treating specific crime problems to promote organizational success. That's why we exist.

Big to Small

One way our team looks at LP is by carefully examining the dynamics of offending and negligent behavior in three levels of the environment. Crime events flow from motivated offenders coming into contact with vulnerable, desirable targets. Environmental criminology refers to macro, meso, and micro settings, and we believe this reference helps us better think and act in those dimensions. By thinking about and collecting data on varying levels, your team can much better plan and deploy cost-effective solutions.

When we look at the below levels, think about offenders and how their behavior is shaped by the built and cultural environment, and how altering their perceptions of opportunities, risk, and required effort is critical at each spatial level. Your problem-analysis will indicate where and what crime and loss control tools to employ, where and why.

Macro environments like areas surrounding a given store, distribution center, or office, include offender clusters, such as socially disorganized living areas, temporary work sites, some high schools, and the larger transportation networks. Store or DC visitors and employees usually come from surrounding areas. And public and private transportation routes also help dictate a location's risk level.

Think about and collect data on why, how, and when offenders target and travel to and from your places.

Estimated macro environmental risk level will help predict expected problem levels. Internal and external models, such as Cap Index, other models, and police calls for service, can help project violent and property crime levels.

Meso environments like parking lots tie together the neighborhood and a specific place like a store. The amount of curb cuts, boundary types and definitions, day and night time visibility, and surrounding places all play a role in risk level as well. Bars, game centers, and similar places can serve as crime attractors and generators.

Think about and collect data on why, how, and when offenders access and move to and through your locations.

Identify access and egress points, visibility and lighting levels, and consider reported crime levels and existing police and security services to help in your assessment.

Micro environments consist of a store's or other location's exterior and interior make up that we want to protect. The store's assets, permeability, entrances and exits, visibility, deployed relevant security tools, manager commitment, and real-world practices all affect the place's vulnerability to surrounding risk.

Think about and collect data on why, how, and when offenders visit, attack, and leave your places.

Assess your employees' commitment, training, execution, and needed tools to determine adequate protection techniques to minimize loss.

Another important concept to keep in mind is that retail organizations are really systems. Retail companies exist to sell goods to customers. And the flow of data, merchandise, and financial instruments should be carefully constructed, manned, and audited. Too often many of us isolate on the all-important stores, but purchasing, supply chain, and information and money flow are critical and all operations influence the others.

Likewise, at every point, people are the difference-makers. Good people make the best out of whatever they face. Not-so-good folks can make a mess out of even good situations, and can be a real disaster in tough environments. So we have to take the human factor into account during our diagnostic and treatment phases.

This list is just a part of retail performance dynamics, but hopefully it gets you and your team even more motivated to think about, analyze, and act in multiple dimensions.

LPRC Update

Our LPRC field team has just completed another round of in-store offender interviews. Corrie Tallman, John Eassey, and I talked to over 35 shoplifters around packaging dynamics at the request of the LPRC's Packaging Innovation Working Group headed by John Voytilla of OfficeMax. Some key findings include packaging size, shape, material, and messaging adjustments to better hinder/deter open-carry, concealment, and package-attack theft.

The Predictive Analytics Working Group headed by Carlos Bacelis of Sears Holdings and LPRC's Dr. Daniel Downs and made up of sixteen retail chains is working through an exhaustive list of macro-, meso-, and micro-level variables using structural equation modeling and hierarchal linear modeling to better establish actionable key factors and associations.

The Benefit-Denial Working Group led by Tim Fisher of Best Buy and Dain Sutherland of Walmart, and including over fourteen retailers is preparing several lab and in-store system-wide benefit-denial pilots to work out technology adjustments and best practices.

Again, the LPRC membership extends a warm welcome to all retailers to participate in the annual Impact workshop and conference being held at Office Depot's Boca Raton headquarters October 10 – 12. This year's agenda includes group exercises on new experimental, statistical, and interview research findings, as well as live-offender interaction, ORC surveillance and sting vehicles, and a lot of highly interactive networking events. If you're interested, more information is available from Jenna Pennington at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

No matter what, crime and loss keep happening. That's why every issue of this column is dedicated to supporting LP professionals. I really hope sharing research findings, crime-prevention concepts, and research methods helps all of us get better at reducing potential and actual crime and loss as well as getting adequate budgets to accomplish this end.

As most readers now hopefully know, Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) retail members drive our research objectives. In turn, the LPRC team determines how best to meet retailers' objectives by choosing the best guiding theory and research methods. As mentioned before, we use multi-method research to better understand and measure loss dynamics and protective processes. Below are some of our latest efforts and current findings.

StoreLab Learning and Innovation Centers

LPRC's StoreLab program is designed to innovate, pilot, and improve solo and combined asset protection efforts in active store or distribution center locations. We are now working in over sixteen locations in Gainesville, Florida, two in Chicago, one in Atlanta, and four in Los Angeles. These working retail locations are provided by member companies Home Depot, SUPERVALU, Publix, AutoZone, OfficeMax, CVS/pharmacy, Office Depot, Advance Auto, and T.J.Maxx.

We're using these stores and others to learn how current and proposed enhancements or new technologies and processes work using some sales and loss data as well as shopper, employee, and offender interviews. A key thing we're working on now is how specific crime and loss events occur on a micro level. We're also looking very closely at the mechanisms of action of technologies. Most events result from a cascade of concurrent and sequential factors. To be really precise and cost-efficient, we need to understand these processes. We're accumulating a lot of report briefs and video highlights to aid our learning.

One key point of note—bad things happen as a result of a cascade of preceding events and environmental factors. And good things like prevention happen when we interrupt or "shock" would-be offenders by changing the factors. We're learning about this on a micro level in our StoreLab locations, as well as by interviewing offenders. This way we can see and hear about what's probably causing what and why.

LPRC working groups, including benefit denial, product protection, video analytics, and packaging innovation, are looking at a variety of new technologies for deployment into lab store locations, including electronic and chemical product or packaging locks, laser detection, peg and fixture solutions, sticker and logo variations, and facial and movement recognition.

We use our large-scale randomized controlled trials or field experiments, as well as statistical models to learn on a more macro scale what's going on and why. We need both scales and all the data we can get to gain the greatest understanding.

Offender Research

LPRC researcher Corrie Tallman is heading LPRC's multi-faceted offender interviewing program. This component is critical to everything we do. We need to understand offender characteristics and how that affects how they notice, interpret, and respond to environments and asset protection efforts. We've talked to hundreds of offenders by phone and had dozens walk through our lab locations so far as we add and tweak the loss prevention efforts. Our interview data come from multiple external and internal sources:

• ORC—We are working with several ORC teams around the U.S. to systematically interview boosters and fences. We've been on location raids and done many field interviews with all levels of offenders.
• In-store—Several retail chains are preparing to collect data from all detained offenders by having their in-store people ask a set of key questions.
• Referral—Multiple chains have their in-store LP people recruit detainees to call our interviewers.
• Public recruiting—We are also recruiting active offenders from all levels and types via advertisements.
• Employees—We have recently begun collecting data from detained dishonest employees from three chains with more retailers coming on line.

Offender interviews and store visits are dramatically increasing our ability to better overload or deter offenders by helping them better see, understand, and fear situationally deployed deterrent cues around high-loss and high-crime items and areas.

Predictive Analytics Or Data Modeling

Our team is statistically looking at how factors outside stores, such as interacting with parking lot, and interior variables explain and predict outcomes, including sales, accident, and loss levels. We mostly want to explain, not just predict, good and bad levels or events, so we use different variables and different statistical techniques. Both are important. Retailing experts work to propose what probably explains what, and how to best measure these variables.

We then test these hypotheses using inferential statistics. Our current focus is on explaining between store variance, so we look at what drives individual store risk level, as well as how well a given store handles their risk level. We think this is very important since spurious or other non-important relationships don't really get us too far down the road we all want to be on. We're of course finding how important management knowledge, tools, commitment, and execution are, as well as other social and built environmental factors.

Randomized Controlled Trials

We've now completed nine field experiments, or randomized controlled trials (RTC), and are currently in the middle of two more with even more planned. As an experimentalist, I firmly believe we should rigorously determine how well an LP effort works by using good sampling, assignment, control, measurement, and analysis. Small pilots and simple before-and-after observations are helpful, but loss is so high, and safety and reputation are so precious, we believe in using best science to study efficacy or impact as well cost-effectiveness.

RCTs are not perfect. They are strong on measuring cause and effect in studied locations, but are not as strong for extrapolating results. But by using larger stratified samples, we can better estimate outside tested store results.

We've now tested Keepers/safers twice, protective fixtures three times, enhanced CCTV public-view monitors (ePVM) twice, enhanced CCTV domes (eDomes) once, Spiderwraps once, source-tagged hidden EAS once, and store-applied visible EAS tags once. We've also evaluated a set of in-store protective procedures and in-store warning signage.

We have found all tested processes can work or fail, but all have been found effective when specifically tailored to specific problems and stores (think situational crime prevention). Our team is now working with packaging, stickers, new fixtures, and even more enhanced ePVMs, with even more testing in detailed planning.

Membership Update

LPRC member retailers are excited to announce continuing membership growth with the recent additions of Walgreens, eBay, Meijer, Toys"R"Us, PWC, Rite Aid, 7-Eleven, Bloomingdales, and Barnes & Noble to our roster. The group is now talking to over a dozen additional retail chains they want to interact with and engage in the multiple research projects, conference calls, and meetings.

This column is dedicated to supporting all LP professionals. Hopefully sharing research findings, crime-prevention concepts, and research methods helps all of us get better at getting adequate budgets, as well as understanding and preventing crime.

In the last column we discussed how LP experts can use situational crime-prevention concepts or theory to design and improve crime and loss control impact. This column is more about how research works and how to use it to get better.

The Language of Research

Research is a lot like any topic, you should know the science jargon. We then take on some of the major issues in research like what questions are we trying to answer, and what's the best way to answer key questions. So, we turn to some important terms like variable, hypothesis, data, and unit of analysis.

Two terms, theoretical and empirical, actually work together with theoretical meaning developing, exploring, or testing how something really operates. Empirical means actual observed and measured perceptions of that something. Most research blends these two terms by comparing how our theories about how the world operates with our actual observations of its operation.

Most crime prevention research is probabilistic, or based on probabilities. The inferences we make in research have probabilities associated with them, which is why statistics are so important in our research since they allow us to estimate probabilities for the situations we study.

Another critical term is causal, meaning much of our research describes relationships or opinions, but most of our randomized controlled trials and cross-sectional predictive analytics explore relationships between a certain theft-reduction countermeasure and the observed loss level. Most of us have heard there can be a difference between a correlational relationship and a causal relationship. With so much at stake in LP like serious injuries, loss of reputation, and heavy financial losses, most research should help identify crime and loss causes.

We can't do a lot of research unless we discuss variables. A variable is any entity that can take on different values.

A hypothesis is a specific statement of prediction or relationship. It describes what we expect will happen in our study. Not all studies have hypotheses. Sometimes a study is designed to be exploratory in order to later develop hypotheses.

There can also be two types of data—qualitative and quantitative. We usually call data quantitative if it is in numerical form and qualitative if not. Photographs, videos, and sound recordings can be considered qualitative data.

A very important research concept is the unit of analysis. The unit of analysis is key since we want to explain variance between members of the unit of analysis in a study such as:

• Individuals (employees, offenders),
• Places (stores, DCs),
• Groups (managers, customers, districts), and
• Interactions (crime-prevention treatments, loss levels, sales levels).

Deductive and Inductive Thinking

In logic we often refer to the two broad methods of reasoning as the deductive and inductive approaches.

Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data—a confirmation (or not) of our original theories.

Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom-up" approach. In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.

Making a Difference

As mentioned last issue, you should carefully diagnose your specific problem and then adjust the proposed solutions. Your research should include hypothesizing about what, who, when, where, why, how much, and how the problem is occurring. Then collect incident, interview, survey, and experimental data to support, adjust, or not support what you thought.

Good research should help your team much better understand loss dynamics, how well or not crime-prevention treatments work, and provide clear descriptions for senior executives as they decide whether to fund your LP programs.

Loss prevention executives have a clear mission—to support their organization's success by cost-effectively reducing crime and loss. Past columns have discussed how professionals like physicians use evidence to drive how they design and deliver preventive and therapeutic programs. Good science can focus and improve crime and loss control more precisely than benchmarking and small tests. Where does an LP manager start? What programs really work?

Place-based vs. Offender-based Action

Criminologists have long debated the best ways to reduce crime. Overwhelmingly most modern criminologists spend their time building and testing theories on reducing crime by reducing the likelihood an individual wants or needs to commit an offense. They concentrate on criminality rather than crime events. They study who is predisposed to offend and how to change their course. Criminologists' discussions often revolve around nature versus nurture.

On the other hand, a small but growing number of criminologists are more interested in directly reducing crime events, rather than the disposition to offend. Reducing criminal propensity is valuable and laudable, but situational prevention can produce more immediate benefits...and retailers need immediate benefits. This group of scientists is dedicated to preventing crime by reducing crime opportunity. I belong to this group of "environmental criminologists."

Environmental criminology strives to prevent crime by altering crime opportunities. Offenders may have varying backgrounds and motivations, but Texas State University's Marcus Felson describes how crime occurs when these likely offenders come into contact with relatively vulnerable and desirable targets. Simon Fraser University's Paul and Patricia Brantingham explain how offenders happen on or search for these desirable crime opportunities. Finally, Rutgers University's Ronald Clarke provides insight into how offenders assess and make offending choices in specific environments.

Criminal decisions and choices are like those of most people in that they are somewhat rational. Offenders consider potential benefits of stealing, potential risk of detection and punishment, and how much effort they would need to steal something.

Situational Crime Prevention Techniques

Adapted from Cornish and Clarke (2003:90)

Increase the Effort

1. Target harden

2. Control access to facilities

3. Screen exits

4. Deflect offenders

5. Control tools/weapons

Increase the Risks

6. Extend guardianship

7. Assist natural surveillance

8. Reduce anonymity

9. Utilize place managers

10. Strengthen formal surveillance

Reduce the Rewards

11. Conceal targets

12. Remove targets

13. Identify property

14. Disrupt markets

15. Deny benefits

Reduce Provocations

16. Reduce frustrations and stress

17. Avoid disputes

18. Reduce emotional arousal

19. Neutralize peer pressure

20. Discourage imitation

Remove Excuses

21. Set rules

22. Post instructions

23. Alert conscience

24. Asist compliance

25. Control drugs and alcohol

Situational Crime Prevention

Environmental criminological theory (how things really happen) and growing research evidence can definitely help retail LP executives become even more effective. Dr. Clarke has worked hard over the years to develop, and guide and motivate others to help develop a practical crime prevention toolset (see chart opposite). The key is called situational crime prevention (SCP). This SCP matrix describes twenty-five research-backed crime prevention techniques for practitioners like LP Magazine's readers.

SCP techniques are designed to make theft less rewarding, more difficult, and much riskier. The theory is aimed entirely at deterring offenders before and after they approach a store. SCP can guide any LP practitioner in devising, testing, and deploying their LP programs since the simple, evidence-based concepts are flexible, testable, and can be cost-effective.

Situational Crime Prevention Techniques

SCP contains many examples of existing retail LP techniques, including those that increase risks for offenders—EAS, lighting, product alarms, exception reporting, hotlines, awareness programs, customer service programs, selection-sound generating fixtures, and others. SCP examples that reduce potential rewards for offenders include benefit-denial tools like ink/dye tags, small clamps, and phone or gift cards that require post-purchase activation to use them. Finally, SCP techniques that increase theft efforts include locking fixtures, not carrying or taking products off of open sale, barriers, locks, and safes.

Bear in mind, all retail-focused SCP techniques have some supporting evidence, but most have little or poor evidence at this point. That is the industry and the Loss Prevention Research Council's challenge—to better design and more rigorously test SCP techniques.

Focus, Focus

Another critical SCP point is pre-implementation analysis. SCP starts with the word "situational." Crime and loss prevention efforts need to be designed or refined to address very specific problems. Rarely are two situations completely the same. Retail LP professionals need to conduct a thorough analysis of their problems. Carefully look at where the problems are clustered in place, time, and product and then select and tailor proposed solutions or treatments. Future columns will further discuss these concepts. The next step is to conduct some pilot research and development, then a larger, more rigorous field trial of the solution versus control to gain critical loss and sales data for return-on-investment projections.

My advice is to use your personal expertise and experience, but to use even more science in diagnosing, testing, and treating current and emerging problems. This method isn't easy, but desired results and success will follow.

As always, I look forward to your insight, comments, and questions, and we'd love to someday work with you and our team. Please email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .