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The Selectivity of Legal Sanctions: An Empirical Investigation of Shoplifting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Erhard Blankenburg
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Abstract

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This study examines the factors that determine the probability that a very common form of deviant behavior, shoplifting, will be detected, reported, and sanctioned. Data obtained both from self-reported crime, and from experiments in which researchers actually shoplifted goods from supermarkets and department stores with the authorization of their executive officers but without the knowledge of store employees, indicate that enforcement of the norm is highly selective. Less than 10 percent of all shoplifting is detected, and customers appear unwilling to report even flagrant cases. Even with an announced policy of full reporting and prosecution, only 70 percent of the shoplifting detected is reported, and only 55 percent is sanctioned. Foreigners, adults, and blue-collar workers are disproportionately represented among those sanctioned.

These findings challenge the common assumption that norms backed by legal sanctions are highly effective. One reason may be that the division of labor between stores, which detect, and police and prosecutor, who sanction, completes the differentiation of moral and legal norms, subverting the effectiveness of both. The results also highlight the misleading nature of criminal statistics, which purport to measure crime but in fact describe the behavior of detecting and enforcing agencies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Fall 1976 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

An earlier more detailed version of this paper appeared in German (Blankenburg, 1969). Several of our points have subsequently been made by other researchers, whose publications we try to include in our citations.

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