// BBC BUSINESS NEWS — FINANZA
Shoplifters carrying shopping lists, says M&S manager
Elisa Lewis said there was no such thing as a ”typical“ shoplifter
Shoplifters walk into branches of Marks & Spencer with a list in an attempt to get away with hauls worth thousands of pounds, a regional manager says.
Elisa Lewis, who is responsible for M&S shops in Shropshire, said shoplifting was a "really large issue" and could be "a daily, possibly even hourly, occurrence".
"In my experience it can be anybody," she said. "It can be a bored housewife who's just nicking a jacket for a bit of fun, and the people who we do catch are sometimes those we least expect."
Some shoplifters were people experiencing alcohol or drug dependence who said they were "just doing it to survive".
As a physically smaller woman, she said she found tackling some of them "intimidating", but had become more hardened to it through experience.
Figures collected by the BBC show a slight fall in the number of shoplifting offences across England and Wales in the past financial year and that was mirrored in the West Mercia police force area.
Marks and Spencer has a policy of issuing lifetime bans to shoplifters, which Lewis said could be a big deterrent and a big shock, especially to younger offenders.
But she said sometimes it turned out to be a genuine accident and they took people to their in-house detention room to try to understand their motivations before acting.
Cath Harmer, from Shrewsbury Business Improvement District, says it is important shops continue to report shoplifting