With retailers entering the busiest shopping period of the year, Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) Executive Director Dr. Read Hayes is urging the industry to adopt more structured, data-driven methods to address increasingly organized and persistent retail crime.
Hayes discussed current trends and prevention strategies in a new conversation with former DHS Assistant Secretary Michael Evanoff on Verkada’s “Vantage Points” podcast.
During the interview, Hayes said retailers are confronting both opportunistic theft and more coordinated activity, and he emphasized the importance of understanding offender behavior. He distinguished between “need-driven” theft, such as food items, and “greed-driven” theft tied to higher-value goods sought for resale. According to Hayes, prevention efforts that increase effort, elevate risk and reduce reward can meaningfully influence an offender’s “rational choice” calculation.
Hayes also highlighted the LPRC’s “bow tie” model, a risk-analysis framework that breaks down a crime event into the factors leading up to it, the incident itself and the post-event impact. The model is said to help retailers evaluate vulnerabilities, identify where controls fail and pinpoint which interventions are most effective before and after an incident.
Building on that operational framework, Hayes described what he calls the “Connect 3” ecosystem, a model designed to share intelligence between individual stores, corporate security teams and community partners such as law enforcement. The approach aims to help retailers more quickly identify repeat offenders and organized crews while reducing the likelihood of recurring victimization.
The full podcast episode and accompanying blog post can be accessed here.
