Shoplifting: It’s a Crime

Typical shoplifting incidents are dramatized with young people of both elementary and high school age. Young boys steal items at a grocery store. A teenage middle-class girl is caught after taking cosmetics and other articles in a department store. As the scenes unfold, the film points out the additional cost to honest shoppers (a 5% extra cost on all items for a total of about $4 billion per year), the refinement of methods of apprehension, and the embarrassment and consequences of being caught. Final emphasis of the film is on the long-range consequences as well as the short-term ones of arrest, jail or probation; the blemish of one’s record which can seriously limit an individual’s future.