If you get caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart for the first time, you apparently won't get prosecuted if the goods you nicked are worth less than $25. The New York Times received internal documents outlining this new policy. Previously, police were called if the shoplifter was nabbed with more than $3 in merchandise. According to the NYT article, police are called to some stores to make as many as a half-dozen arrests a day, "prompting a handful of departments to hire an additional officer just to deal with the extra workload." From the New York Times:
J. P. Suarez, who is in charge of asset protection at Wal-Mart, said it was no longer efficient to prosecute petty shoplifters. "If I have somebody being paid $12 an hour processing a $5 theft, I have just lost money," he said. "I have also lost the time to catch somebody stealing $100 or an organized group stealing $3,000…"
Retailers, (Joseph J. LaRocca, vice president for loss prevention at the National Retail Federation) said, have learned that prosecuting small shoplifting cases "does not warrant the store resources or the judicial resources required, given the dollar amount that was stolen."
In some cases, loss prevention executives said, retailers will prosecute only shoplifters who steal at least $50 or $100 worth of merchandise. The legal costs required for prosecution, they said, are simply too high. Stores must hire a lawyer for employees who become witnesses in a trial, for example, and pay workers overtime to appear in court.
