That doesn’t prove much, the expensive clothes store didn’t have things that could be fenced easily for drug money while the drug store is much more convenient for that. Sure the things in the clothes store are worth more, but to a grifter looking for their next fentanyl hit, they can’t do anything with whatever they lift there (as opposed to an organized flash mob who has plans to fence the goods online somehow).
The downtown Seattle target hires off duty officers, yet their lego section is still depleted (there was a fence for legos at pike place market that wasn’t shutdown until a few months ago) and people still shoplift like crazy since the city and county won’t prosecute.
Portugal may have the answers but I have yet to look into this deeply enough to make a claim either way.
It would definitely be worse for them, if we moralistically care about their well being. They would also probably still need housing and food given to them, as their addiction would often prevent them from prioritizing those things with the UBI they got. UBI isn't a panacea to these problems, at least.
It is perfectly legal in California for an employee to use non-lethal force to detain a shoplifter. Its also legal to put them in a cell and call police, and not let them out until the police come (even if they will just free them)
Once a store is known to not do any of this, then yeah - every shoplifter will come flooding into those small subsets of stores
Ignoring extreme cases like shoplifting flash mobs - i'm just writing about the people who come in, empty a shelf into a bag and leave. You can't do that in 90% of stores. The employees will become violent with you.
There was the very famous case of the Rite Aid that closed in NYC. That block is wall to wall stores. Duane Reed, some expensive clothing stores. None of them had the hourly shoplifting Rite Aid had, because only Rite Aid made it known they will not attempt to stop anyone
Again in NYC, it costs $50/hr to bring in an armed uniformed off-duty NYPD officer to stand in your store. They get overtime and its run through the city, officers sign up for it. If you can't justify $50/hr to help shoplifting, then you probably have different issues going on causing you to close (the rent for that Rite Aid was probably $10k+/month)