THEFT IN INDUSTRY
By R. H. CECIL HAVE often thought, looking through the annual Criminal I
Statistics, that there must be scope for useful research among the facts they leave out. They do not tell us, for example, how many thieves we have, or how many thefts—or even how many losses that might have been thefts were reported to the police. They tell us how many losses, having been reported to the police, were then judged by them and the Courts to be thefts. There-are many reasons why thefts do not get reported, but apart from the multitude that are never discovered the more obvious reasons are reluctance to accuse a person formerly well-regarded, previous experience of the maddening waste of time at the criminal courts, ignorance of police machinery for recovering (sometimes after long delays) property missing and suspected to be stolen, misplaced diffidence about intrinsically small losses, and mere bone-laziness. Laziness, it should be added, is often overcome when there is insurance money to be had ; for the insurance companies usually require, before settling a claim, that the loss be reported to the police, and thus play a valuable part in maintaining such records as there are.
What the proportion of recorded to unrecorded larcenies may be is sheer guesswork, the only common ground among the guessers being the certainty that the unrecorded must predominate. Is it not strange that, in a modem "planned economy," with all its experience and apparatus of social research and statistical survey, so vital a question should be left to guesswork ? The present system is, essentially, the primitive one of counting heads, and it has long been regarded as inadequate by social-survey enthusiasts. Recent increases in convictions for theft, disturbing as they may be in them- selves, are trivial by comparison with the value increase. It seemed shocking enough that thieves stole 2+ million pounds' worth of goods in 1938. In 1947, it seems, they had over 12 million pounds' worth.
This intimidating figure has been computed bit the Department of _
Social Science in the University of Liverpool, who have just issued their preliminary report* on a most interesting examination into the effects of larceny on the country's programme of economic recovery. Among other things "a special enquiry was undertaken," 'says the report, "to determine the amount involved when reported as 'boo or over ' " (one of the value categories used in the Criminal Statistics). "A sample of 631 cases was selected at random from such reports, and in &eh case the precise amount involved was ascertained by reference back to the original records of the case, held by the police of the area concerned. The cases investigated were spread over ninety-one separate police authorities. The work was made possible by the generous co-operation of the Home Office and the police forces con- cerned." It was on this basis that the £2,5d6,0oo accounted for in the Criminal Statistics became Lt2,o3O,000.
The Committee compared the ascertained value of the thefts reported' to the police at seaport towns with their own estimate of the loss due to theft of imports and exports, and found that the proportion reported to the police was about one per cent. The trimina/ Statistics are compiled at the Home Office from figures supplied by the police. If the Committee's conclusion is correct, the Sop:nits are thus quite valueless as a guide to the incidence of larceny, and indeed we have no conception of otir criminal problem as a whole. Apart from incalculable losses by shoplifting and pilferage by employees, huge quantities of consigned goods fail to reach their destinations. Underwriters settle- claims in respect of them without knowing the cause of the loss—there is no central organisation that could cope with the work of investigation—and these losses are classified under the heading of a non-delivery."
Claims adjusters agree that theft accounts for 75 per cent, of them. The remainder, according to this report, are ascribed to (a) unloading at the wrong port, (b) delivery to the wrong consignee, (c) losses overboard during loading and unloading, and (d) oblitera- tion of addresses onpackages. Categories (a) and (b) cannot, however, be. considered as apart from theft—concealed misdelivery must *The Increase in Crimes of Theft. University Press of Liverpool. 25. 6d. involve larceny by somebody—and the goods "lost overboard" category (c) are too often recovered by confederates of the dock- labourers who " lost " them. As to (d), the appropriation of lost' property by the railways, and its sale by auction (after little or no enquiry about ownership) to enterprising "Railway Lost Property " firms for resale as dubious " bargains " in junk shops, would provide, an interesting line of research on its own. This report is probably on safe ground, however, in suggesting that "the best estimate of the loss can be made by adding 75 per cent, of non-delivery chims to known cases of theft."
The basis- of the report is the number of convictions given in the 1947 Criminal Statistics for breaking-and-entering (i 11,789) and larceny (33o,918);--though, incidentally, the first figure should be 111,456. The research committee made some allowance for "distor- tion due to methods of recording," but, in my opinion, not enough. They omitted altogether the 27,435 cases listed as "Receiving, Frauds, and False Pretences," many of which are plain, downright thefts, embezzlemefits, and swindles distinguished from larceny only in technical, legalistic ways that sometimes exasperate even the Judges of the High Court. They do not allow for the fact that many offences of breaking-and-entering do not in fact involve any theft at all—unsuccessful burglaries and shopbreakings in which, never- theless, the "intent to commit felony" is plainly deducible from the circumstances—and they could not, know what proportion of the " larceny " total comprised cases in which the Magistrates' Courts, in order to "give themselves jurisdiction" and avoid the bother of formal committals for trial, " reduced " breaking-and-entering charges to larceny (where there had been any stealing) or to malicious damage or "being found in premises" (where there Eltd not). The High Court, by the way, condemns the illegality of this procedure in vain. Moreover, in the committee's examination of "Thefts of Goods Intended for the Home Market," where they justly complain that "the official classification of crimes on a legal basis fails to. throw any light on the problem," they are mistaken in saying that nothing is known concerning the loss of "goods in course of manu- facture." This is at least not true of stealing ten-shillings' worth of cloth in a partly-manufactured state, since all such offences known to the police are reported annually to the Home Office ; the offence still carries a maximum of fourteen years' imprisonment under sec- tion 9 of the Larceny Act, 1916.
The whole enquiry, however, is a remarkable attempt to assess the effect of larceny on the present economic situation ; and it is no bad thing that, with so many committees bending their minds to the causes of crime, one at least should call our attention to some of its effects. It is the more remarkable in that it has sought to do, under great difficulties, what industry should long ago have done for itself —as in New York, where a "Security Bureau, Inc.," with a permanent staff of former F.B.I. men, not only combats industrial theft but keeps records of the value and nature of goods stolen, ensures that crimes are reported which would otherwise never come to official notice, and promotes legislation for more effective control at ports and other goods-collecting centres. What the Liverpool investiga- tion has already done is to reveal the need for an investigation ; and there is now in progress a further enquiry to "close the gaps in our knowledge as to the losses in certain economic fields."- Above all, it has called attention to the need for a central index (Scotland Yard, is suggested) where all recotds could be catalogued according to something more relevant to modem needs than the odd framework of anachronistic legalisms into which we still force our scattered knowledge of thieves and theft.
It is no criticism of the committee's work to say that, when we know exactly what larceny is costing us, we shall not necessarily be any nearer to its extirpation ; and although they devote an appendix to a description of New York's "Security Bureau, Inc.," which sounds to me like a toughened Pinkerton set-up and fingerprints all the New jersey watchmen so as to prevent the employment of con- victed men, they do so without comment. For my part, I believe that larcenies of this kind will ,diminish as to-partnership in industry increases—not, indeed, because a man will not steal property of which he is part-owner, but because the people who own the other part* are likely to watch his behaviour with hair-trigger interest.
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