San Francisco’s shoplifting epidemic is shocking to behold. But we shouldn’t imagine that the same couldn’t happen here. In fact, we’re well on our way. According to the British Retail Consortium, theft from stores across 10 UK cities is up by 26%. More, “incidents of violence and abuse against retail employees have almost doubled on pre-pandemic levels.”

On Tuesday, Asda Chairman Stuart Rose told LBC that “theft is a big issue. It has become decriminalised. It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore.”

In the absence of an adequate response from the authorities, retailers are beginning to take defensive measures. For instance, home furnishings company Dunelm is now locking up duvets and pillow cases in cabinets; Waitrose is offering free coffees to police officers to increase their visibility; and Tesco plans to equip staff with body cameras. 

The “progressive” response to this phenomenon isn’t quite as deranged as it is in in the US. Nevertheless, British liberals have responded as expected. A piece in the Observer is typical. You’ll never guess, but apparently it’s all the Tories’ fault: “Starving your population and then ‘cracking down’ on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable.”

But as the writer ought to know, the issue here isn’t the desperate young mum hiding a few groceries in the pram. Nor is it the schoolboy pilfering the occasional bag of sweets. Rather, the real problem is blatant, organised and sometimes violent theft of higher value items. Criminals who never previously thought they could get away with it increasingly now do — thus presenting a material threat to retail as we know it. 

But instead of addressing the issue head-on, the writer blames the victim: “Once goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking.” How terribly irresponsible of them! On the other hand, perhaps the open display of goods isn’t just a convenience for customers, but instead the hallmark of a high trust society. 

In fact, modern shops are a minor miracle of civilisation: public spaces, stacked high with products from all over the world, that passing strangers may freely inspect and handle, but which aren’t looted by anyone who feels like it.

Surely, that’s something worth defending. But if you’d prefer to abandon retailers to their fate, then don’t moan when they do what it takes to survive. Some will close, of course, and others will move their operations online. Those who stay open will guard themselves and their stock behind plexiglass and electronic tags. And then there’s the hi-tech solution: the fully automated and completely cashless store, in which customers have to be authenticated to even get in. 

Remember that retail facilities like this already exist. One day, when they become the norm, we’ll remember what shops used to be like. Then, we’ll ask why no one stood up for them.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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If you want to avoid being prosecuted for mishandling classified information, you need to do one of two things. You should either win election to the presidency, or retain the president’s approval to mishandle classified information without leaving a paper trail.

John Bolton isn’t the president, and he failed manifestly on that second concern. That is why Donald Trump’s former national security advisor yesterday reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ). The deal will see Bolton avoid the decades of possible prison time he would have faced had he gone to trial and been convicted. Instead, the ardent Trump critic and former US ambassador to the United Nations will pay a $2.25 million fine, surrender his federal pension, and complete 100 hours of community service and three years of supervised release. Bolton also faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

Bolton and his supporters presented this case as a political witch hunt. The reality is different. The investigation into his mishandling of classified information began during the Biden administration and generated momentum following an Iranian hack of Bolton’s emails. The Trump administration essentially pushed an objectively motivated prosecution over the finish line, albeit to the obvious delight of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. After all, Bondi was under heavy pressure from Trump to weaponize her department against the President’s perceived enemies. She lost her job for failing to sate his appetite in this regard.

Still, Bolton’s case underlines the new reality when it comes to prosecutions involving classified information: you had better be too powerful to touch (the president), or too close to the president to touch. Consider the blockbuster New York Times report earlier this month on what was said and by whom in the White House Situation Room in response to the Epstein files. There have been repeated leaks to the press on the status of US negotiations with Iran and the content of just-concluded calls between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These leaks clearly came from senior administration sources and pertain to highly classified information. And yet there have been neither prosecutions nor reports of FBI investigations into the leaks.

Had a career military or intelligence officer been suspected of leaking this kind of information to the media, they would have faced immediate and severe sanctions. It is difficult for such individuals even to have friendships with journalists because of the reporting requirements and counterintelligence attention entailed. That those responsible for the Iran war leaks have faced no consequences underlines how FBI Director Kash Patel and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have zero interest in uncovering evidence of Trump allies in illegal acts. It’s not a question of investigative difficulty. Because of how tightly held some of the reported classified information would have been, any FBI investigation would immediately focus on a narrow list of possible suspects.

This rot goes to the top. Biden’s DOJ aggressively prosecuted Trump for his retention of numerous highly classified documents after his presidency. But when it came to Biden’s own willful retention of classified documents in his garage, among other places, the DOJ took a very different approach than it did towards his predecessor. Because of Biden’s apparent cognitive decline during DOJ interviews, the Department declined to bring charges. Yes, Trump refused to return the classified documents in his possession after months of demands from the government. But Biden’s conduct was also inexcusable: he had read many of his documents aloud to a ghostwriter, even saying he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs”.

The basic problem is that far too many politicians and political operatives now believe they have a get-out-of-jail-free card for leaking whatever classified information they wish. They must simply retain the perception of the president’s favor and avoid a paper trail. Yet these same individuals are the ones least knowledgeable about the risks of leaking classified information, or the masterful efforts that foreign intelligence services will go to get said information out of them, including adversaries such as China and allies such as Israel. The result is a situation which is both unethical and dangerous.

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Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

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