TOP TO BOTTOM SHELF: REDISTRIBUTIVE CRIME

Loss prevention personnel in retail firms face difficult and expensive decisions regarding the technologies they should implement to reduce product loss and redistributive crime. Using Office Depot as a case study, this paper evaluates redistributive crime, which is the tendency for theft of unprotected products to increase when surveillance systems are placed on protected ones. I also analyze the security measures used to combat these crimes, focusing mainly on the Electronic Article Surveillance systems and the product loss for a single high-risk department as compared to several standard departments. My results allowed for the calculation of a loss prevention equilibrium point, where the cost of loss prevention is equal to its benefits when using the Alpha boxes for the ink department.