6 days Ago By [email protected] (Joshua Hartley)
Nottinghamshire Live is highlighting the impact of shoplifting on smaller and independent businesses in the run-up to Christmas, the busiest time of the year for retail. This week, reporter Joshua Hartley talks to an expert about how drug addiction is driving up shop thefts - and the desperately sad stories that have created some of Nottingham's most prolific criminals. Jeremy Wilson, who works for addiction support service Nottingham Recovery Network, does not shy away from the scale of the problem - which many city shopkeepers and shoppers have begun to notice more and more.
"There has been a massive increase in shoplifting, and the perpetrators are a mixture of organised crime and those that are desperate to feed an addiction," he explained, but the picture is complex. Mr Wilson manages the network's Clean Slate programme, which works with people with substance use issues who come to the attention of the criminal justice system. "Some of these people, over many years, have stolen a quarter of a million pounds of stuff - and it's mostly driven by drugs like heroin and crack cocaine.
"Shop theft is mostly perpetrated by people with substance problems. It'll be things like legs of lamb that are sold down the pub but then really big ticket items like the latest computers - which are then sold for just a few bags of heroin." Mr Wilson explained that unlike the organised crime gangs which commit the rest of shoplifting offences, people with addiction problems will sell the high value goods for low prices to quickly source drugs as a "survival mechanism".
The desperate addicts could have to steal £300-400 of goods a day to feed their damaging fixation, he added. While the programme manager thought all drug addictions contributed towards shoplifting, he singled out crack cocaine dependence as one of the most prominent causes of the offence. Crack cocaine is a highly potent, addictive drug that gives users a dopamine high when it's smoked.
The most recent UK Health Security Agency figures estimated there were 3,412 opiate and crack cocaine users in Nottingham during 2019/2020. "Their addiction will drive their frequency of offending, people refer to it as a raging crack habit - and it is raging. It is a very chaotic drug and the way it works means that you will want to keep repeating the dose.
"Wealthy people can lose it all to crack cocaine, so you can imagine what it can do to someone who is living on the street." Clean Slate deals with about 1,500 cases a year of people who have drug and alcohol addictions, and Mr Wilson said those risking prison to feed their addiction had a wide range of problems and disadvantages that had taken them down this path. "People look at people with substance issues as undeserving because I don't think they see the back stories of these people.
I would say for about 75 per cent of the criminal justice caseload, you could look at their horrendous childhood and then see what the drivers are. "You will find a caseload of victims themselves, but that's difficult to get across to the general public." He explained that the people using the programme's services, a high proportion of whom had committed shop theft, were dogged by traumatic experiences, poverty, poor educational achievement, and mental and physical health problems.
"They find solace in their addiction, it gives them support - but it's not positive support," he added. Addicts had also been impacted by how Covid had stopped money from begging - as people are less likely to carry cash - and poor access to housing. Nottingham Recovery Network, which is managed by Framework but is a partnership between a number of local agencies, operates a team that helps addicts access housing after being released from prison.
It also has staff who work at Nottinghamshire Police's custody suite, where they can help offenders get into treatment. Mr Wilson, who worked in the probation service for 15 years before moving to Framework nearly 10 years ago, said some addicts had become accustomed to the lifestyle they needed to live to feed their destructive habit - making it hard to treat them. "There are people whose names I recognise from more than 20 years ago when I started, and these people are becoming the aging population with abuse issues whose addiction will eventually cause their death," he said.
However, the expert hoped that by working with Nottinghamshire Police and the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), as well as helping the public to understand the benefits of funding treatment, lasting change could be achieved. He praised the "really successful" Offender to Rehab Scheme, which has turned shoplifters' lives around , and called for greater support for treatment initiatives. "Drug treatment services have been underfunded for a long time, so we're just trying to catch up again," Mr Wilson explained, before adding: "If you do the maths on how much public money is saved through providing treatment it is well worth it, and it will reduce retail crime and harm to victims as well.
"These people are self medicating, using intoxication as a tool of escapism. The general public sees the 2D aspect of these people, but there's so much more than that.".
