With the UK reportedly in the grips of a shoplifting epidemic, Woman speaks to those who you’d never expect to be part of the problem
As Caroline Parker* pushes her shopping trolley out of the supermarket, she experiences a frisson of excitement. It might seem an odd feeling to elicit from a mundane weekly chore, but in fact it has nothing to do with the act of buying groceries. No, it is because Caroline has a guilty secret.
Only she knows that hidden beneath the carefully packed bags in her trolley are a few loose items – cheese, bags of pasta, chocolate – all of them stolen. ‘The thrill lies in getting away with it, I certainly don’t do it for financial gain because I don’t need to,’ says Caroline, 53, who is married with two children in their 20s.
Dressed in tailored trousers, heels and a jacket, with immaculately styled hair and make-up, she hardly fits the stereotypical image of a thief, but neither is she alone. Welcome to the world of the middle-class, middle-aged shoplifter – women with zero financial reasons to steal, but for whom doing so appears to be a reaction to feeling unfulfilled in their 40s and 50s.
According to statistics released last month by the British Retail Consortium, shop thefts have more than doubled in the past three years, and currently cost retailers some £953 million a year. The Co-op said recently it had recorded its highest-ever levels of retail crime, shoplifting and anti-social behaviour in the six months to June, with almost 1,000 incidents each day. And while most of this is down to the usual suspects – those in need, teenage chancers or criminal gangs – hidden in plain sight is a secret subculture of affluent women for whom shoplifting has become a surprising compulsion.
A retired executive office manager who owns a small portfolio of rental properties close to her home in Gloucestershire, Caroline says it all began for her one day in 2021 in a well-known DIY superstore.
‘I’d gone to collect some pre-ordered items but I also needed to buy a £150 power drill on the day,’ she explains. ‘I suddenly had this compulsion to peel the ‘already paid for’ sticker from one of my pre-ordered items and put it on to the power drill instead. To avert suspicion, I picked up a few bedding plants costing around £5, which I put through the till.
‘I can explain it only as a sudden, impet
