A jewellery anti-crime scheme is warning retailers about the ‘increased risk of crime’ as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reports an increase in the cost of crime over the past year.
The report by the BRC suggests lost revenue to be £1.6 billion when including retail crime of all types; the value of goods stolen; damage done; and the money retailers spend on prevention. The retail sector suffered around two million shoplifting incidents this year involving around £200m of goods. The value of each item stolen has risen by almost 30pc on previous years. The survey found that, on average, nearly one in 20 stores suffered a robbery during the year.
SaferGems Co-Founder Michael Hoare, pictured, said: “These figures are concerning when you consider SaferGem’s figures for the last year. We’ve seen approximately £15m of goods stolen in 2012 alone and we know we’re currently only serving about 50 per cent of the retail jewellery market. Reports of incidents haven’t increased noticeably but the main thing we’re seeing is, as suggested in the BRC report, organised gangs targeting high-value goods. Over the past year we’ve seen SaferGems scupper 120 crimes in progress, contribute to 17 arrests and provide information resulting in four convictions. As data is often limited and we don’t always find out what happens once the police have taken on a case, it’s hard to tell how much crime there is out there – and how much we’re stopping. However, what this means for SaferGems is that we need to try and make ourselves more visible, both to jewellers and to potential criminals, and report suspicious incidents before the event. In this way we can continue to grow, spread our message and collect data from the industry to see what the real impacts are and measure our real impact on jewellery related crime. Not only that, SaferGems needs to acknowledge our role as a silent deterrent to criminals thinking about targeting a jeweller.”
Later this year SaferGems will begin a new marketing campaign aimed at giving higher profile to participating stores. For more information on this campaign or SaferGems in general, visit www.safergems.org.uk
