Retail Crime Survey

Surveys of crime are worth keeping an eye on, as they help compensate for a major deficiency in official crime statistics. The official stats are generally “crimes known to the police.”  These crimes are undercounted when people don’t bother to report the crimes, and the nonreporting rate tends to increase when policies are adopted that lead people to believe that the police won’t do anything if they do report.

The National Retail Federation has this report on its 2023 Retail Security Survey. Among the results reported are the metropolitan areas identified by retailers as most affected by organized retail crime:

The top 10 are as follows.
1 CA – Los Angeles
2 CA – San Francisco/Oakland
3 TX – Houston
4 NY – New York
5 WA – Seattle
6 GA – Atlanta
7 – 8 CA – Sacramento, IL – Chicago
9 – 11 CO – Denver, FL – Miami, NM – Albuquerque

Notice the correlation between high placement on this list and having a “progressive prosecutor.”