As the Christmas season approaches, the shelves are brimming with goods, yet the tills are not ringing as loudly as they should.
Retailers across the country are taking action due to the frequent use of the five-finger discount.
Concerned about the police’s response to shoplifting, many retailers are turning to controversial facial recognition technology to apprehend culprits before they strike.
Sainsbury’s, Asda, Budgens and Sports Direct are among the high-street businesses that have signed up for Facewatch.
a cloud-based facial recognition security system that scans faces as they enter a store.
Those images are then compared to a database of known offenders, and if a match is found, an alert is set off to warn the business that a shoplifter has entered the premises.
It comes as official figures show shoplifting offences rose by 13% in the year to June, reaching almost 530,000 incidents.
Figures reported in August indicated that more than 80% of shoplifting incidents result in no charges being filed.
At the same time, retailers are reporting more than 2,000 cases of violence or abuse against their staff every day.
Faced with mounting losses and safety concerns, businesses say they are being forced to take security into their own hands because stretched police forces are only able to respond to a fraction of incidents.
A Facewatch camera
At Ruxley Manor Garden Centre in south London, managing director James Evans said theft had become increasingly brazen and organised.
with losses from shoplifting now accounting for around 1.5% of turnover. “That may sound small, but it represents a significant hit to the bottom line.”
he said, pointing out that thousands of pounds’ worth of goods can be stolen in a single visit.
“In certain cases, we have sent children in to steal.” They are aware that their parents will be waiting in the car park, and they understand that there is no action we can take to prevent them.
Gurpreet Narwan is seen at the garden centre while being shown how FaceWatch works.
Staff members at this location have also experienced numerous encounters with shoplifters.
In one case, an accomplice in a car nearly struck employees who were trying to stop a suspected shoplifter. “This is no longer just about stock loss,” said James. “It is about the safety of our staff.”
The technology is not without its critics.
However, the technology is not without its critics. Civil liberties groups have warned that the expansion of this type of technology is eroding our privacy.
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, called it “a very dangerous, privatised policing industry.”
Retailers are implementing Facewatch as a means to combat crime.
“This situation really threatens fairness and justice for everyone, because now, while simply doing your supermarket shopping, a company is quietly collecting your very sensitive biometric data.”
That’s data that’s as sensitive as your passport, and [it’s] making a judgement about whether you’re a criminal or not.”
Silkie said the organisation routinely received messages from people who claimed they had been mistakenly targeted. One such individual is Rennea Nelson,
who had her identity mistakenly flagged as a shoplifter at a B&M store due to an error in the facial recognition database. Police threatened Nelson and warned that her immigration status could be at risk.
Gurpreet’s profile can be seen on the Facewatch database
“He said to me, If you don’t get out, I’m going to call the police. So at that point I turned around and I was like, ‘Are you speaking to me?’
Then he was like, ‘Yes, yes, your face set off the alarm because you’re a thief…’ At that point, I was six to seven months pregnant and I had a high-risk pregnancy.
I was already going through a lot of anxiety, and so his coming over and shouting at me was really triggering me.”
The retailer later acknowledged the error and apologised, describing it as a rare case of human mistake.
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A spokesperson for B&M said, ‘This was a simple case of human error, and we sincerely apologise to Ms Nelson for any upset caused. Reported incidents like this are rare. Facewatch services are designed to operate strictly in compliance with UK GDPR and to help protect store colleagues from incidents of aggressive shoplifting.”
The cloud-based technology has critics who argue that it amounts to a misuse of personal data and privacy
Nick Fisher, chief executive of Facewatch, said the backlash was disproportionate.
“Well, I think it’s designed to be quite alarmist, using language like ‘dystopian’, ‘Orwellian’, and ‘turning people into barcodes’,” he said.
“The inference of that is that we will identify people using biometric technology, hold and store their own, and store their data. And that’s just, quite frankly, misleading. We only store and retain data of known repeat offenders, of whom it’s been deemed to be proportionate and responsible to do so… I believe that in our current world, as long as technology is used and managed responsibly and proportionately, it can only be a force for good.
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Yet, there is obviously widespread unease, if not anger, at the proliferation of this technology. Businesses are obviously alert to it, but the bottom line is calling.
