Well, since I've known people who worked as loss prevention managers and who did it, and since the news article on the issue posted elsewhere in the thread specifically identified that retailers have changed policies in ways which reduce that, yes, I am reasonably think that they were doing so before and are doing so less now.
> And if crime isn't being prosecuted
To the extent that is a problem in some places (which no source I've seen indicates it is generally, though I've seen some indicating it may be in San Francisco specifically), then that too is not a requirement of the law (misdemeanors are not nonprosecutable) and the same criticism shifts within law enforcement to DAs, it's still not the law’s fault.
Why are you placing blame at everything downstream instead of what actually triggered the changes?
You are looking at this backwards. It's all directly because of policy changes, because that's what changed the judicial behavior, which affected upstream police behavior, which affected upstream public's behavior.