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…

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…

As a general rule, the more positive options we have, the more readily we can prevent or solve problems. Our current crime and loss prevention development and evaluation efforts are focused on providing retail decision makers with multiple options. To do this, some of our work on infant formula and vodka theft, for instance, involve working on multiple procedural and technological protective measures to see how they work and compare. By placing proposed solutions into StoreLab innovation sites and working to iron out problems and make adjustments, we learn some best practices. And by separately testing the solutions in randomized…

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…

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…

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…

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…