CBC film fell off the back of a truck, huh?

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Shulman runs a treatment centre for shoplifters and over-spenders. (CBC)

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Judd takes a tough-love approach.

As anyone who's ever listed "Winnipeg" in their address line can tell you, everybody loves a bargain.

But some folks, it turns out, love even more of a discount even more than the rest of the population. And that pursuit of an even-lower price is at the root of an ever-growing problem in this consumer-minded society of ours.

CBC's Doc Zone takes a look inside the world of the light-fingered this week with The Secret World of Shoplifting (Thursday at 8 p.m., CBC), an hour-long documentary produced by Winnipeg-based Merit Motion Pictures.

Written, produced and directed by local TV veteran Andy Blicq (Pioneer Quest, The Truth About Liars), The Secret World of Shoplifting examines the issue of retail theft from both sides of the equation, exploring the motives and methods of those who steal while at the same time assessing the strategies and success rates of the folks whose job it is to catch shoplifters and keep consumer goods from disappearing from shelves.

The statistics are a bit daunting -- The Secret World of Shoplifting reports that more than 600,000 retail-theft events occur in North America every day; that roughly one person in every 10 is an active shoplifter; and that fully 80 per cent of the continent's population has shoplifted at least once.

Most consider shoplifting to belong in the "petty crime" category, but the fact of the matter is that North American businesses lose somewhere around $40 billion (yes, billion) each year to what industry insiders describe as "shrink" -- meaning theft and administrative errors.

One of the most intriguing individuals interviewed in The Secret World of Shoplifting is a lawyer named Terry Shulman, a reformed retail thief who now runs a treatment centre for shoplifters and addictive over-spenders. He explains that there are many reasons that people steal -- some do it for profit, others out of impoverished need, and still others for the sheer dysfunctional thrill of it -- but what all shoplifters share is the overwhelming likelihood that if they've done it before, they're going to do it again.

Writer/director Blicq gains access to closed-circuit video footage from a number of retailers and shows how quickly and easily the professional class of retail thieves -- dubbed "boosters" here -- get their work done (including a clip that's priceless -- both literally and figuratively -- in which a bold thief walks right out the front door of a store with a small motorcycle).

The film also drops in on law-enforcement types like Florida sheriff Grady Judd, whose tough-love approach to shoplifters has generated controversy, and Jerry Biggs, head of organized-crime prevention for the U.S.-based Walgreens drugstore chain.

What's clear from Secret World is that the right-side-of-the-law gang is working tirelessly, and using ever-more-sophisticated technology, to combat shoplifting, and also that their around-the-clock efforts are barely putting a dent in this multibillion-dollar criminal industry.

While its examination of techniques and defensive strategies is enlightening, where Secret World falls somewhat short is in its explanation of the base-line motivations for thievery. Shulman and others state that many non-professional shoplifters are driven by deep-seated needs and issues, but there's very little time spent exploring just what those inner demons might be.

Beyond that small shortcoming, however, The Secret World of Shoplifting is pretty engaging stuff, and darned timely as we head into the most consumer-crazed few weeks of the year. The film makes a point of reminding shoppers that sometimes, the pursuit of a cheap-o price might lead the most well-intended customer to buy something -- online, or at a flea market or garage sale -- that has been stolen, re-labelled and perhaps resold as part of the shoplifting cycle.

"We're a spoiled nation," says a flea-market shopper outside an open-air Florida mall. "And we're not used to doing without."

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 2, 2009 D3