Wendy and I watched a news report recently which referred used the word ‘steaming’ to refer to shoplifting. It’s hardly a neologism—here’s a newspaper article from the last century which uses it in the headline—but it was new to us.

There have been a lot of puzzling articles about shoplifting recently, whether it’s Dame Sharon White referring to an ‘epidemic’ or Tyler Brûlé worrying about how toothpaste is displayed. I say ‘puzzling’ because none of the coverage seem to get under the skin of the issue.

Reports to police of shoplifting seem broadly comparable to pre-pandemic levels. We all understand that there can be differences between experienced and reported crimes, and that bare numbers of crimes don’t tell the whole story: a business experiences the loss of a packet of Polo mints differently to a gang ‘steaming’ a technology display, even if both are reported as a single crime. Most of the news articles seem to base at least some of their reporting on the crime figures, making slightly odd year-on-year comparisons without providing any wider context. So, I’m not really given to understand from the coverage whether this really is a period of unusual incidence, or whether something else has changed, or whether this is just a return to the pre-pandemic norm.

It’s one of those unfortunate examples where, almost universally, the news coverage of a trend leaves me feeling less well informed.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.